The Case For A Suspension Of Intellectual Property Rights

Context: The recent denial of an amendment to the global intellectual property (IP) laws by Bill Gates puts a question over the qualification of IP in case of emergency provisioning of vaccines around the world.

Background: Why did Bill Gates give his refusal to relax IP laws? –

• Gates believe that the bottleneck in vaccine production is not IP laws but the manufacturing capacities.
  • Our global vaccine production capacity is about 3.5 billion doses a year. In order to cover even 70% of the global population, we need to increase that to 10 billion doses.
  • Since mRNA vaccines are particularly difficult to manufacture, the developing world would not be able to use this to produce the required amount of vaccines.
  • However, a recent Foreign Policy article, on the other hand, suggests that there are facilities in low- and middle-income countries that can easily be re-tooled to make mRNA vaccines.

Challenge of vaccine production in current IP regime

• Restrictions under Trade-Related aspects of Intellectual Properties (TRIPs):
  • Nations that have the capabilities are restricted since they need to first secure the right to manufacture vaccines from holders of intellectual property rights.
  • Inadequacy of compulsory licensing regime: While the TRIPs does permit the countries to exercise special powers during a public health emergency, it will be of no practical benefit.
    • This is because the production of mRNA vaccines also requires access to over 100 key components that are themselves manufactured across over a dozen countries.
    • In addition, we will need access to various other non-chemical intellectual properties—such as algorithms, software and training materials.
  • Restrictions under World Trade Organisation (WTO): Countries will need to source essential ingredients and supplies required from other countries where they are manufactured.
    • Further, WTO restricts the production of vaccines which can be then exported to other nations.

Conclusion: Temporarily suspending the intellectual property restrictions remains the key to expanding Covid vaccine production.

• Request to WTO by India and South Africa need to be reconsidered: Over 100 countries supported the move but was blocked due to strong opposition of the US and other European nations.