Bill Gates Got It Right: Intellectual Property Rights Must Be Protected

The protection and enforcement of intellectual property rights (IPR) are important and longstanding components of U.S. international trade policy and U.S. trade negotiating objectives. Since 1995, the World Trade Organization Agreement on Trade-Related Aspects on Intellectual Property Rights (TRIPS Agreement) has been used to advance IPR rules internationally by setting standards for intellectual property protection and enforcement.

For many years, intellectual property rights have come under attack from a loose coalition of academics, nongovernmental organizations, multilateral groups, and others whose opposition threatens to undermine innovation, growth, and progress on key global challenges including pandemic preparedness.

Beginning in early October 2020, India and South Africa began circulating a proposal to the WTO TRIPS Council based on the premise that intellectual property rights are potential barriers to research and development, public-private collaborations, and access to COVID-19 products.

These countries, along with a chorus of the usual anti-IP stakeholders, are calling to waive all forms of intellectual property protections related to COVID-19 until the majority of the global population has developed immunity. The proposal would suspend global intellectual property protections specifically applied to patents, copyrights, industrial designs, and undisclosed information.

TAPP believes that South Africa and India (countries which have historically supported significant intellectual property infringement and theft) are using the COVID-19 pandemic opportunistically to advance their longstanding international trade policies.

In its eighth discussion on the topic since it was first raised in October, the WTO TRIPS Council spent three hours debating, but failed to agree. Proposals need backing by a consensus of the 164 WTO members to pass.

Fortunately, the United States, the European Union, the United Kingdom, Switzerland, Norway, and Japan strongly oppose this proposal, saying it would be unnecessary, would not accelerate access to COVID-19 vaccines or therapeutics, and would risk undermining a coordinated global response to the pandemic.

In a recent interview with the New York Times, Bill Gates articulated the importance of maintaining intellectual property protection in the face of the COVID-19 pandemic.

New York Times:

“…The Gates Foundation organization and funds have incentivized big drug makers, letting them hold patents and reap the profits. Why not use the crisis to create a more equitable system of developing vaccines? There was push back in India and other places.”

Bill Gates:

“Well, making vaccines is very, very hard. A highly regulated vaccine involves hundreds of inspections that you’re following what’s called GMP, good manufacturing practice. And people like vaccines to be safe. And so the notion that you’re not going to open source vaccine manufacturers. There’s not a single additional vaccine that would have come out of that. We did fund the biggest vaccine factories in the world, which happened to be in India, to take and make the same vaccine. So, AstraZeneca is being made in the Serum factory, funded by Gates Foundation — likewise Novavax and Serum, Johnson & Johnson and Bio E. So getting those factories going — believe me, IP did not limit anything that was being done here. There are cases where IP can stand in the way. It’s a super complicated topic. The companies now often do tiered pricing. But I’d give pharma a very high grade for how they cooperated with each other and how they built up capacity here. And no free IP would have improved anything related to this pandemic.”

Read the transcript of the entire interview here: https://www.nytimes.com/2021/02/15/opinion/sway-kara-swisher-bill-gates.html?showTranscript=1

TAPP applauds Bill Gates for standing firmly with the innovators who are bringing us out of the pandemic and who will be ready to address future crises, knowing their innovations will be protected and their efforts justly rewarded.

 

Relevant Resources:

Ainsley Shea