Breaking the patent on the corona vaccine would break the trend of support that the United States and the European Union have shown for the interests of the pharmaceutical industry. André den Exter, associate professor of Health Law at Erasmus School of Law, states in NRC that it is surprising how little attention is paid to the consequences of patents and intellectual property on global healthcare.
The patents on the corona vaccine are under pressure. While the United States and the European Union have a long history of supporting the pharmaceutical industry’s interests, the US is now showing a turnaround in its position. They have announced that they will support the temporary lift of patents on corona vaccines so that worldwide more people can get access to these vaccines .
Expensive medicine
However, this is not the first time in history that patents on medicines have been under pressure. In the 1990s, patents were pressured during the HIV crisis. The price for the treatment of HIV was so high that it was inaccessible for millions of people. It was only after the emergence of broad political recognition for the issue of expensive medicines that governments of developing countries issued dozens of compulsory licenses for the production and import of HIV medicines.
The TRIPs treaty
Intellectual property law and medicines are inextricably linked. The TRIPs treaty was adopted within the World Trade Organization (WTO) in the mid-1990s. This treaty lays down the agreement that all the WTO member states had to grant twenty-year patents to pharmaceutical companies. According to Den Exter, the TRIPs treaty was drawn up from the perspective of the international industry. He states that it is bizarre how little attention is paid to the health care implications. “When drawing up this treaty, the position in commercial law was considered purely, and the consequences for health care were ignored”, according to Den Exter.
Intellectual property pool
Knowledge and expertise are needed to make medicines and treatments. An ‘intellectual property pool’, a place where different companies share their intellectual property and expertise, can be a way to overcome the limitations in drug and treatment development. An ‘intellectual property pool’ already exists for treatments for AIDS and hepatitis C. The World Health Organization WHO is now encouraging pharmaceutical companies to participate in the ’Covid-19 product pool’, but Western companies are not yet supporting this proposal. The industry is more interested in voluntary licensing, but developing countries indicate that this still yields far too few vaccines.
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Read the full NRC article here (in Dutch).
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