EU, UK raise doubts about COVID-19 vaccine patent waiver at WTO; express hesitancy

The EU, UK, and Japan on Monday continued to raise doubts at the World Trade Organisation (WTO) for the proposed intellectual property waiver (IP waiver) on the COVID-19 vaccines’ raw material and other product, a Geneva trade official reportedly said. While in its monumental shift under the Biden administration, the US has backed and supported the waiver for intellectual property related to COVID-19 vaccines, other member countries which include Australia, Brazil, Britain, Japan, Norway, Singapore, South Korea, Switzerland, and Taiwan, EU, and the UK expressed doubts about the negotiations on the India and South Africa-led proposal as they requested for some more time to thoroughly analyze it. 

“It is important for WTO Members to work together to ensure that intellectual property rights such as patents, industrial designs, copyright and protection of undisclosed information do not create barriers to the timely access to affordable medical products including vaccines and medicines or to scaling-up of research, development, manufacturing, and supply of medical products essential to combat COVID-19,” the WTO committee said at the meeting. 

The intellectual property rights on the COVID-19 have largely been hindering the timely provisioning of affordable vaccines and medicine to coronavirus patients, globally. And therefore, some of the WTO Members states, including India and South Africa have requested an urgent legal amendment to the national patent laws to expedite the process of issuing compulsory and government use licenses. 

Countries, particularly India have highlighted the institutional and legal barriers when using flexibilities available in the Agreement on Trade-Related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights (TRIPS Agreement) that restricts the domestic manufacture of the internationally approved jabs.

The pharmaceutical giants and their host countries, as well as PhRMA, a body that represents leading pharmaceutical research companies of the world, have been creating a roadblock insisting that the the developing countries’ request for IP waivers was made “without evidence" that the intellectual property was hindering global response to the pandemic. While the WTO chief Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala has been pushing for international agreement to outdo the national patents, some countries argued that there was "no proof" how the waiver could scale up research and development and manufacturing that is needed for COVID-19 products. 

Only 63 WTO members backed proposal

WTO requires the consensus from all 164 member states, and currently, there has been the support of just about 63 WTO members backing the revised proposal pushed forward by India and South Africa. Confusion and doubts were raised about the duration of the proposed IP waiver and subsequently, its termination. The discussion gained momentum this month after US Trade Representative Katherine Tai made an official announcement that the US supports a temporary waiver to the WTO’s intellectual property laws for the vaccine raw material. 

"While intellectual property rights for businesses are important, Washington supports the waiver of those protections for COVID-19 vaccines," US Trade Representative Katherine Tai said in a statement. "This is a global health crisis, and the extraordinary circumstances of the Covid-19 pandemic call for extraordinary measures," she further added. 

South Africa and India approached the World Trade Organization (WTO) with an appeal to urge countries to suspend the IP rights on vaccine manufacturing raw material, including the industrial designs, patents, and trade secrets on the innovation of the jabs formula so that it encourages other countries to manufacture the vaccines and fight the coronavirus pandemic. South African President Ramaphosa reiterated calls for a landmark waiver on intellectual property (IP) to make the COVID-19 vaccines available for the developing nations, urging the world for promoting "speedy and equitable” access to medicinal products to fight the global health crisis in solidarity while the rich nations have been hesitant.