Gutting patent rights is a dangerous prospect. Drug intervention is highly risky. Fewer than 12% of new molecular entities that make it to clinical trial stage get to the marketplace. It depends on $100bn in annual private sector investment on top of billions in taxpayer money. So before governments take the risk of waiving patents they should evaluate whether intellectual property rights are standing in the way of vaccine manufacturing and distribution.

 

 

The IP system is working - Most factories on the planet that can make vaccines are doing so. One of the biggest, the Serum Institute in India, has contracts with vaccine manufacturers to make millions of doses. Under these deals manufacturing plants in India will produce 3.6 billion doses in 2021. Other companies have licensed their manufacturing process to subcontractors, and even to competitots. Johnson & Johnson and Merck are teaming up to expand manufacturing capacity. Novartis and Sanofi are using their facilities to help increase the production of the Pfizer/BioNTech vaccine.

 

In short, there's robust collaboration and cooperation withing the industry to ensure that vaccines are made quickly and safely. And patents actually facilitate such cooperation, because each entity can rest assured that its propietary technology is protected in the long run. So before rushing to disrupt the world's intellectual property systems, governments need to identify specific evidence that intellectual property protection is actually a problem.

 

Adar Poonwalla, CEO of the Serum Institute told The Guardian that insufficient license granting by patent holders is not an impediment to speedy vaccine rollout and that 'it just takes time to scale up,' pointing to the complexity of the manufacturing process.

Intellectual property right have made it possible for research scientists to make the decades of investments required to develop and deliver safe and effective COVID-19 vaccine in record time. Companies would not share such critical technology with competitors if the law di not protect their investments.

Stat News - 12th April 2021 by Andrei Iancu is a partner at Irell & Manella, a law firm based in Los Angeles, and a senior adviser to the Renewing American Innovation Project at the Center for Strategic and International Studies. He served as the undersecretary of commerce for intellectual property and director of the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office, a position to which he was confirmed unanimously by the Senate.