PhRMA Calls on Biden to Defend U.S. Intellectual Property Rights for COVID-19 Products

More than two dozen PhRMA members have sent a letter to President Biden, imploring him to oppose India’s and South Africa’s proposal to the World Trade Organization (WTO) to waive intellectual property (IP) rights for COVID-19 innovations during the pandemic.

PhRMA President and CEO Stephen Ubl and 30 pharma company executives stressed in a letter to the president that IP protections have been paramount during the crisis in accelerating research and development for COVID-19 vaccines and treatments, as well as for sharing information and technology to enable ramped-up vaccine manufacturing. Temporarily removing such IP protections would weaken the international pandemic response, they argued, asking Biden to take a stand against the waiver alongside the EU, the UK, Canada, Japan and others.

The industry concern is focused on the proposal by India and South Africa, formally put forward in October 2020 to the WTO’s Council for Trade-Related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights (TRIPS), to temporarily suspend IP rights for COVID-19 products, including vaccines and therapeutics (DID, Dec. 14, 2020). The proposal will be discussed at a March 10-11 TRIPS Council meeting.

The countries, whose proposal has been met with resistance from wealthier nations, including the U.S. during the Trump administration, contend that generic firms are unable to get the patent approvals they need to make COVID-19 vaccines and treatments for expanded global supply, especially for lower-income countries. PhRMA, however, advised the president that doing away with IP rights would harm worldwide efforts to end the pandemic, not help them.

“Eliminating those protections would undermine the global response to the pandemic, including ongoing effort to tackle new variants, create confusion that could potentially undermine public confidence in vaccine safety and create a barrier to information-sharing. Most importantly, eliminating protections would not speed up production,” they said, claiming that COVID-19 vaccine makers are projected to supply around 10 billion doses by the end of the year, enough to vaccinate the entire world population.

“Intellectual property is the foundation for both the development and sharing of new technologies. Perhaps more than any other time in history, society is seeing and benefiting from the innovation supported by intellectual property.”

PhRMA has spoken out against India’s and South Africa’s proposal in the past as being detrimental to U.S. innovation, asking the WTO last month to reject it (DID, Feb. 3).

Read the PhRMA letter to President Biden here: www.fdanews.com/03-08-21-PhRMALetter.pdf. — James Miessler