“The World Trade Organization’s 12th Ministerial Conference (MC12) was a dismal failure for the 85% of people in low-income countries that have not had a single dose of COVID-19 vaccine, for the billions of people worldwide without access to COVID-19 tests or outpatient oral antiviral treatments...
In October of 2020, foreseeing the deadly consequences of vaccine apartheid, South Africa and India submitted a proposal to the WTO that it temporarily waive intellectual property protections enshrined in the WTO TRIPS Agreement for COVID-19 health technologies in order to support expanded producti...
Every news report that says the leaked Quad text is a promising compromise is wrong. Not nearly enough attention is being paid to the fact that this text does not require or incentivize technology transfer (access to trade secret protected data, info, manufacturing know-how, quality control protoco...
Opponents of the WTO TRIPS waiver proposal, especially Big Pharma, are trotting out a stale set of talking points to oppose the waiver, each of which is easily rebutted: IP is not a barrier: If this were true, why does industry simultaneously argue that IP is essential ...
The confetti is still flying after the Biden administration’s climbdown from obstructing text-based discussions at the World Trade Organization (WTO). The U.S. government now supports allowing countries to temporarily waive enforcement of intellectual property (IP) rights on at least some COVID-1...
On the same day as a meeting of the World Trade Organization (WTO) Council on Trade-Related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights (TRIPS Council) in Geneva, where the Biden administration was explicitly opposing a proposal from South Africa and India, with support of the majority of the WTO’s me...
Nothing could be more cynical than the USTR’s announcement today that a decision must be delayed on whether or not to extend the WTO’s TRIPS decision to therapeutics and diagnostics. Currently the decision only covers COVID-19 vaccines and is already so watered down as to have virtually n...
Switzerland and Mexico have recently filed a communication entitled “TRIPS Council discussions on COVID-19 therapeutics and diagnostics: Evidence and questions on intellectual property challenges experienced by Members” at the TRIPS Council. This communication (IP/C/W/693) purpo...
President Biden’s Bystander Role Aids and Abets this Unconscionable Obstruction The European Union (EU), UK, Switzerland, along with a coterie of other fence-sitting nations, including the US, are blocking meaningful progress on a revised waiver proposal at the World Trade Organization (WTO) t...