Despite U.S. Backing, Doubt Persists on Possible Patent Waiver Agreement at WTO

President Biden made headlines this week by voicing strong support for waiving COVID-19 vaccine intellectual property (IP) rights during the pandemic, but any deal hashed out at the World Trade Organization (WTO) could come too late to make a significant impact.

Negotiations at the WTO are expected to drag on for months and any agreement would require the support of all 164 WTO members. A long delay could diminish the ultimate value of waiving vaccine IP rights even as the global response gains momentum, with Western countries sharing supplies of shots with others and the big COVID-19 vaccine makers increasing their manufacturing capacity.

“Those negotiations will take time given the consensus-based nature of the institution and the complexity of the issues involved,” U.S. Trade Representative Katherine Tai acknowledged.

India and South Africa’s proposal to waive IP protections for coronavirus vaccines was first put forward to the WTO in October 2020, but the proposal has still failed to make headway. The two countries said this week that they will draft a new policy to hopefully sway countries on the fence to come to the negotiating table.

Simon Lester, associate director for the Cato Institute’s Herbert A. Stiefel Center for Trade Policy Studies, suggests that an agreement on a final waiver may not be what’s actually in the Biden administration’s sights.

“What may be happening here, and it’s hard to know exactly what the administration is thinking — and different people in the administration may be thinking different things — is that they are trying to put pressure on the pharmaceutical industry to do more licensing of production to factories in developing countries,” Lester said in a blog post. “Thus, the sudden U.S. support for a waiver may be part of its negotiating strategy with the pharmaceutical companies.”

Biden’s unexpected move to support IP waivers during the pandemic has been met with serious criticism from industry figures who have argued in favor of granting production licenses and scaling up vaccine manufacturing instead.

“Undermining IP rights for complex, hard-to-manufacture vaccines will not accelerate global production. Instead it will take us off track in the ongoing and successful efforts to license and scale global production of vaccines,” said Neil Bradley, executive vice president and chief policy officer of the U.S. Chamber of Commerce. “Make no mistake, this move will undermine the global fight against COVID and it will diminish our ability to prepare for and respond to the next pandemic. We urge the administration to reverse course.”

Similarly, Michelle McMurray-Heath, president and CEO of the Biotechnology Innovation Organization, contended that granting IP waivers to increase vaccine access will be ineffective because of the many complexities involved in production.

"Handing needy countries a recipe book without the ingredients, safeguards and sizable workforce needed will not help people waiting for the vaccine. Handing them the blueprint to construct a kitchen that — in optimal conditions — can take a year to build will not help us stop the emergence of dangerous new COVID variants,” she said. “The better alternative would have been to follow through on the president’s pledge just last week to make the U.S. the world’s ‘arsenal of vaccines’. This policy leads in the opposite direction.”

European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen said Thursday that the trade bloc is now open to talks on proposals for waiving protections for coronavirus vaccines after previously being against them.

“The EU is also ready to discuss any proposal that address[es] the crisis in an effective and pragmatic manner,” said von der Leyen.

The next meeting of the WTO’s Trade Related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights council, which is facilitating discussion of the potential patent waivers, is scheduled for June 8-9. — James Miessler