President Biden: Oppose Waiving Intellectual Property Protections for COVID-19 Meds!

U.S. Representative Jan Schakowsky of Illinois has drafted a letter asking the Biden administration to reverse the Trump administration’s opposition to removing intellectual property protections relevant to COVID-19 medicines. In a nutshell, Schakowsky’s idea is to allow the infringement of longstanding intellectual property rights to let developing countries produce medicines outside the normal operating parameters.

Unfortunately, Schakowsky is just one of the activists from the far left pressuring the Biden administration. Biden undoubtedly will also be under pressure to follow U.S. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s lead, as she is reportedly now on board with the waiver to bypass patent protections on the vaccines, diagnostics, and so on. Keep in mind: These are intellectual property rights granted at the World Trade Organization for COVID-19 vaccines to foreign countries. 

Schakowsky, as chief deputy whip is one of the Democrats’ top vote counters in the House, will also have a great deal of influence to convince other lawmakers to join her in pressuring Biden.

“We must make vaccines available to everyone, everywhere, if we are going to crush the virus anywhere,” Schakowsky said in an online briefing. She is correct about this, but she fails to recognize that intellectual property protections are one of the factors that allow innovative medicines to exist in the first place. Thus, her supposed solution is a fool’s errand in the long run.

We have seen in the past year the innovation, speed, and nimbleness that the pharmaceutical industry is capable of delivering in the face of a challenge like the COVID-19 pandemic. In remarks at a Pfizer facility in Michigan just last week, President Biden praised the efforts of the industry to address the pandemic. The fact is, pharmaceutical companies would be far less likely to exert the effort required for such a response if their intellectual property rights were uncertain or nonexistent.

At TAPP, we are taking the long view and opposing the waiver, because it would likely scare off research investment in the future—and, considering the historical record, that future is likely to involve more pandemic challenges that we will want drug innovators to address.