An Analysis of COVID-19 Related IPRs : Should they be Promoted, Waived or Pooled?

In past decades, there have been abundant discussions regarding management of medical Intellectual Patent Rights (IPRs) since India's Indira Priyadarshini Gandhi, then Prime Minister, eliminated medical product patent protection and enacted India's Patents Act, 1970. There were many changes to IPRs related to AIDS drugs during the 1980’s and 1990’s. The Trade-Related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights (TRIPS) Agreement also hosted numerous discussions over the Doha Declaration, an issuance of compulsory licensure, and product patent waivers for least developed countries (LDCs). COVID-19 emerged in January 2000, making salient this controversial issue. Should medical patents be protected, waived, or pooled? Both USA President Joe Biden and Chinese President Xi Jinpin stated that they would support waivers for COVID-19 related IPRs in May 2021. The following week, pharmaceutical industry representatives released statements arguing for the protection of pharmaceutical IPRs. Meanwhile, developing countries, the World Health Organization (WHO), and other stakeholders contend that medical IPRs should be limited. This paper will first describe the current global status of the COVID-19 pandemic and then present COVID-19 related medical patent data using a commercial database offered by Clarivate Analytics. Based on this data, we will then closely analyze stakeholder positions on COVID-19 IPRs. In this study we selected three widely used schemes of pharmaceutical IPR and drug/vaccine distribution – COVAX, Medicines Patent Pool (MPP) and voluntary licensing. After close examination, we found voluntary licensing is the most applicable solution for COVID-19 pandemic at the time being.