Weekly Policy Update: TRIPS Waiver for COVID-19 Vaccines and Treatments still under consideration by the World Trade Organization
By: Colorado BioScience Association Date: 08/23/2021
Earlier this year the Colorado BioScience Association (CBSA) along with 300 other global biotechnology companies and associations signed onto a declaration outlining the harm of a proposed waiver of the Trade-Relations Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights (TRIPS). The waving of IP protections for COVID-19 vaccines and treatments is still under consideration by the World Trade Organization (WTO) would be ineffective and counterproductive in addition to setting a bad precedent for IP protections within the biotech sector for years to come.
CBSA along with our partners at BIO and the Council of State Bioscience Associations (CSBA) will continue to advocate against the waiver as the WTO is set to return from their summer holiday on the week of September 6th.
Back in June, CBSA publicly encouraged U.S Senators Michael Bennet and John Hickenlooper to speak out in opposition to the patent waiver in a special opinion piece published in the Colorado Sun. The column emphasized that IP protections are essential to the technology transfer process in life sciences that leads from lab invention to life-saving commercial products. And in a sustained effort to highlight the harm of the waiver, BIO President and CEO Dr. Michelle McMurry-Heath had an opinion piece published in STAT News last week where she noted “To be sure, the United States and other wealthy nations still need to give considerably more. But the fact remains that ramping up production in bona fide facilities and donating doses are the most straightforward steps to producing the vaccine doses needed to end the pandemic,” she further stated, “The effort to strip intellectual property rights, by contrast, would put success against the global scourge of COVID-19 even further out of reach.”
CBSA advocates for a supportive, pro-innovation business climate for life sciences. We support proposals to strengthen the ability of patent owners to defend their inventions and businesses against infringement.
Learn more about the COVID-19 Vaccine Manufacturing Landscape in a new study by Duke University.