IP WAIVER ON COVID VACCINES

IP WAIVER ON COVID VACCINES

Subject : Economy / IR

Context: Recently, the United States has announced support for waiving intellectual property protection for Covid-19 vaccines.

Concept :

• The US will pursue “text-based negotiations” on the waiver at the World Trade Organization (WTO).
• The text-based negotiations involve negotiators exchanging texts with their preferred wording and then thrashing out a consensus on the working.
• All 164 WTO members must agree on the draft, and any one member can veto it.

Meaning of intellectual property waiver for Covid-19 vaccines

• The IP waiver might open up space for production of Covid vaccines with emergency use authorisations (EUA).
• Most production is currently concentrated in high-income countries and production by middle-income countries has been happening through licensing or technology transfer agreements.
• The US support for an IP waiver stems from a proposal by India and South Africa in the WTO last year.
• The proposal had called for a waiver on all Covid interventions, including testing diagnostics and novel therapeutics.
• The countries including Canada, South Korea, and Bangladesh have shown interest in making Covid vaccines if they can get a patent waiver.

Patents and IP rights

• A patent represents a powerful intellectual property right.
• It is an exclusive monopoly granted by a government to an inventor for a limited, pre-specified time.
• It provides an enforceable legal right to prevent others from copying the invention.
• The patents can be either process patents or product patents.
• A product patent ensures that the rights to the final product are protected, and anyone other than the patent holder can be restrained from manufacturing it during a specified period.
• A process patent enables any person other than the patent holder to manufacture the patented product by modifying certain processes in the manufacturing exercise.
• India moved from product patenting to process patenting in the 1970s, which enabled India to become a significant producer of generic drugs at global scale.