Comparing IP Policy on Access to COVID-19-Related Medical Products between Japan and India

It is thought that Japan is one of a handful countries that have sufficient R&D ability to develop new pharmaceutical products. However, Japan has recently been revisiting its national policy to reinforce the local production ability for medical products combating infectious diseases, based on the failure to develop a COVID-19 vaccine. In contrast, India has a long experience exporting generic and/or voluntarily licensed pharmaceutical products to the world. However, India has not been able to fulfill its national demand, caused partly by the national provision system. Confronted with this contradiction amid the COVID-19 pandemic, India has no choice but to restrict their exportation of medical products responding to COVID-19, and India and other developing countries have proposed to the WTO TRIPS Council to ask for WTO members to recognize an IP protection waiver as far as needed to deal with the pandemic. This paper analyzes what divides the postures of these two countries, by comparing their national and global policy on pharmaceutical R&D and IP protection, before and after COVID-19.