With the United States agreeing to text-based negotiations on the revised Intellectual Property Rights waiver proposal jointly submitted b...
With the United States agreeing to text-based negotiations on the revised Intellectual Property Rights waiver proposal jointly submitted by India and South Africa at the World Trade Organisation, the European Union remains the last major power opposing this proposal.
While we await the results of possibly lengthy text-based negotiations, it is necessary for the government of India to come out with a white paper explaining how exactly it intends to operationalise a possible IP waiver for vaccines, if and when such a waiver comes into effect.
The aim of such an exercise should be to explain to the world the manner in which this waiver will translate into the mass production of vaccines to meet the immediate medical needs of the developing world.
The initial wisdom among the proponents of the waiver is based on an assumption that a waiver will remove the legal barriers to production of vaccines. But as is widely acknowledged by most experts, developing countries will not be able to reverse-engineer these Covid-19 vaccines on their own. They will require active technology transfer from vaccines developers in the West before they can begin manufacture of any vaccines. These challenges are more practical than legal.
Tech-transfer challenge
For starters, even if the IP waiver does come into effect,...
