Attention Economy


Friday, May 7, 2021

Patents and Vaccine Development

Brazil and India Need Their Own Operation Warp Speed
https://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/articles/2021-05-07/waiving-patents-isn-t-enough-to-vaccinate-the-world
Timothy L. O'Brien notes:
Patents and IP laws have always existed, ideally, to protect the brainchildren of innovators and guarantee that they get their rightful share of the bounty from popular or groundbreaking products. In more recent decades, big companies have used patent claims to stifle competitors.
The pharmaceutical industry should be compensated for creativity and risk-taking, of course, and protected from theft. But drug companies, often buttressed with public funding, have also used patents to squelch rivals and maintain lucrative pricing regimes, even when that isn’t in the public interest. ...
The vaccines on the market now didn’t spring into existence solely because of private capital. Taxpayers helped foot a substantial part of the bill, and their interests should be served as well. Moderna, which arguably would never have brought a drug to market without government aid, has already said it won’t enforce its vaccine patent rights during the pandemic”.