ABSTRACT
At the time the COVID-19 pandemic was declared there was no vaccine and other medical products were insufficient to meet demands. At the time intellectual property was considered a limitation to an effective pandemic response and the World Trade Organisation considered a waiver of intellectual property addressed by the Agreement on Trade-Related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights (TRIPS). The lesson from the COVID-19 pandemic and TRIPS waiver is that given enough time sufficient medical products will be delivered, albeit there remain some complicated delivery challenges and vaccine hesitancy issues. This comment addresses the moment before that medical product saturation and the inherent limitation imposed by the broader industry policies applied in the predominantly rich, democratic and developed States that are pro-trade, free market and capitalist economies. This preference is to outsource to the private sector late-stage innovation, manufacturing and delivering the medical products for responding to pandemics with consequences for intellectual property settings and pandemic responses. The comment concludes that the private sectors’ motivating factors need to be integrated into the design of global public health pandemic responses from the start.
Lawson, Charles, Is intellectual property the COVID-19 bad guy? Lessons we could learn from the pandemic (December 20, 2023).
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