ABSTRACT
The production, distribution and availability of vaccines to combat the COVID-19 pandemic are all impacted by the international rules of knowledge governance. These rules include patents, trade secrets and health and efficacy regulatory approval processes. This article discusses how these intellectual property related mechanisms have interfered with vaccine availability. It analyses the international rules, related exceptions (including compulsory licensing and national security) and the possible waiver of the relevant rules found in the World Trade Organization TRIPS Agreement. Throughout the first two years of the pandemic, vaccines were not available widely enough. Although most of the developed world had enough vaccine doses by late 2021, this was not the position in much of the developing world, where the problem now seems to be the distribution of vaccines. Distribution may have always been difficult but the failure for timely local supply has exacerbated the problem of vaccine inequality between the developed and developing world. The problem has several likely causes including intellectual property rules. That said, it is not necessarily the existence of patents (or other rules) but the insufficiency of checks and balances that are necessary to address global public health needs. This has resulted in private interests, whose primary goal is not public health, wielding too much power. The article concludes that collectively the effect of the international rules enacted in domestic laws supports a regime that is not fit for purpose in a pandemic.
Frankel, Susy R, COVID-19, Vaccines and International Knowledge Governance on Trial (June 1, 2022). Queen Mary Journal of Intellectual Property (volume 12 forthcoming).
First posted 2022-06-09 17:00:57
Leave a Reply