The search for a vaccine to halt the Covid-19 pandemic is proceeding feverishly. Governments, industry and philanthropists are pouring fund...
The search for a vaccine to halt the Covid-19 pandemic is proceeding feverishly. Governments, industry and philanthropists are pouring funds into a multitude of vaccine development and manufacturing projects. Both conventional as well as less-explored technologies are being applied to develop a vaccine. At this intensity, a vaccine could be ready to take to market by mid-2021, some experts say.
But will the Covid-19 vaccine become freely available and be affordable? The global intellectual property system allocates the rights of the vaccine to the inventor or owner. These rights are granted for a limited period – 14 years in the US and the European Union, 20 years in most other places. During this time, the owner has a monopoly over the product and can demand a price they seem fit. However, this provision has often been used by the inventors to limit access to essential goods to people who need them or to smaller companies that could manufacture the product at affordable prices.
An example is the legal fight by about 40 US pharmaceutical firms with the South African government that started in February 1998 to prevent the country from manufacturing low-cost generic antiretroviral medicines used to treat HIV. Even with millions of lives at stake,...
