The US on Wednesday announced its support for the waiver of intellectual property protections on Covid-19 vaccines. This was the result of ...
The US on Wednesday announced its support for the waiver of intellectual property protections on Covid-19 vaccines. This was the result of months of advocacy by India, South Africa and civil society. Several scientists and Nobel Laureates have been campaigning for this and have found widespread public support.
The announcement itself wasn’t unexpected given the 2021 Special 301 Report of the US Trade Representative released on April 30 which specifically recognised:
“The United States respects the right of its trading partners to exercise the full range of existing flexibilities in the TRIPS Agreement and the Doha Declaration on the TRIPS Agreement and Public Health in order to scale up the production and distribution necessary to overcome the challenges of the ongoing Covid-19 pandemic.”
India led the world in ensuring that the World Trade Organisation’s Trade Related Intellectual Property Rights ( or “TRIPS”) Agreement, which established a uniform set of rules granting extensive intellectual property rights protections, contained “flexibilities” so that nations could restrict the monopolies that patents grant in certain cases – specifically, during health emergencies like pandemics.
India was a key player in the Doha Declaration that reaffirmed the TRIPS flexibilities and acknowledged that patients trumped patents.
In the ongoing World Trade Organisation negotiations to consider proposals...
