Interview
IP Theory, Vol. 11, p. 1, 2022
10 Pages Posted: 1 May 2022
Date Written: March 4, 2022
Abstract
COVID patent waiver is an interesting but virtually irrelevant debate. If every patent holder tomorrow morning announced “we will not be enforcing any of the patents that we have that relate to COVID vaccines,” you know what would happen to the worldwide manufacturing distribution of vaccines? Absolutely nothing would happen. It would make absolutely no change whatsoever patents are not standing in the way of anything. You know what’s standing in the way of this -- it is really hard to make vaccines. It requires extraordinary technology. The idea that starting a manufacturing facility from scratch tomorrow morning to build a facility that could manufacture COVID vaccines is nonsense. That is not going to happen, not at least in the time frame that would be required to actually have it make a difference in the pandemic. What would be required to change everything, you would have to have an enormous, historic, unprecedented public-private partnership to distribute biologics on a global scale, but the idea of someone coming along with no experience in this and starting up and building a facility to manufacture vaccines, people need to stop thinking about that.
Keywords: COVID-19, pandemic, coronavirus, vaccine, pill, prevention, treatment, Alice v. CLS Bank, 101, patent, intellectual property, law
JEL Classification: K00, K10, K19, K20, K29, K30, K39, K40, K41, K49
Suggested Citation: Suggested Citation