What It Would Mean for Big Pharma If Vaccine IP Rights Are Waived

With Covid-19 vaccination rollouts in low-income countries still lagging far behind those in rich ones, a group of nations continues to push its proposal at the World Trade Organization to lift intellectual property protections for makers of the vaccines. Supporters of the waiver say the spread of the latest coronavirus variant, omicron, brings greater urgency to the need to speed production of vaccines in the developing world. Vaccine makers and other critics of the waiver say it undermines the incentives that led to the rapid development of the vaccines and wouldn’t have any practical effect.

In October 2020, India and South Africa introduced a proposal to temporarily waive enforcement of certain provisions of the WTO Agreement on Trade-Related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights -- or TRIPS for short. The idea is to waive enforcement of intellectual property rules governing the production of diagnostics, therapeutics, vaccines, medical devices and personal protective equipment used to fight the Covid pandemic. Proponents of the waiver say it would provide legal certainty for governments, companies and individuals to produce life-saving pharmaceuticals in places that currently lack significant access to them.