Washington:
Twelve Republican lawmakers have urged the Joe Biden administration to not assistance a proposal by India and South Africa prior to the World Trade Organisation to temporarily waive some Trade-Related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights (TRIPS) guidelines amid the coronavirus pandemic.
If the US provides up intellectual house rights, it will harm innovation and production, and outcome in fewer individuals obtaining vaccinated, the 12 influential Congressmen stated in a letter to US Trade Representative Katherine Tai on Tuesday.
The letter is in response to the proposal in this regard by 60 creating nations, led by India and South Africa.
“The United States should continue to oppose the request by India, South Africa, and other nations to waive certain portions of the Agreement on Trade-Related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights (TRIPS) for all members of the World Trade Organisation (WTO),” the letter stated.
Spearheaded by Congressmen Jim Jordan and Darrell Issa, the lawmakers stated the requested waiver is extraordinarily broad and unnecessary to achieve the target of providing as lots of individuals as feasible access to vaccines and remedy for COVID-19.
They claimed that Prime Minister Narendra Modi pressed US President Joe Biden to assistance the waiver throughout a phone contact in early May.
Among other signatories to the letter are Steve Chabot, Louie Gohmert, Matt Gaetz, Mike Johnson, Tom Tiffany, Thomas Massie, Dan Bishop, Michelle Fischbach, Scott Fitzgerald and Cliff Bentz.
“The justification for the waiver rests on an incorrect assumption that IP rights are a significant bottleneck to the widespread availability of COVID-19 vaccines and treatments,” the letter stated.
“The waiver’s sponsors have presented no convincing evidence to support this assertion. Instead, the sponsors mainly just point out that relevant IP rights exist and speculate that those rights could serve as a barrier to access to COVID-19 vaccines and treatments – not that IP rights have actually blocked or significantly hindered their availability,” it added.
If something, the examples of IP ”disputes” cited by the waiver sponsors normally demonstrate that IP rights have not prevented the involved parties from supplying vaccines and other medicines, the letter stated.
Respect for intellectual house rights has been a cornerstone of the US trade policy for decades and must not be set aside lightly, the Republican Congressmen stated.
“Although some flexibility may be warranted in emergency situations, the waiver of TRIPS IP protections requested by India, South Africa, and other countries would do little to improve public health during this critical period in the COVID-19 pandemic. The scope of the requested waiver is overbroad and unjustified in light of the economic harm it would cause and the negligible benefits it would provide,” they stated in the letter.
“Existing aspects of TRIPS and global public health initiatives, along with the existing actions of key IP rights holders and innovators, make the waiver unnecessary. While considerable work can still be done to improve access to COVID-19 medicines and other innovations, that work can be done without the drastic step of suspending IP rights, and significant progress has already been made to address the real obstacles hampering the global COVID-19 response,” they stated.
The lawmakers argued that relevant intellectual house rights have been effectively licensed to expand access to COVID-19 innovations whilst keeping IP protections. For instance, the Serum Institute of India has secured licenses to create numerous vaccines, such as Astrazeneca and Novavax vaccines.
South Africa’s Aspen Pharmacare has secured a license to create the Johnson & Johnson vaccine.
Several vaccine makers have licensed direct competitors to enhance vaccine manufacturing capacity.
Moderna has announced that it would not seek to enforce any of its COVID-associated patents against other vaccine makers for the rest of the pandemic and has pledged to license its COVID-19 vaccine patents.
Gilead has licensed nine generic pharmaceutical suppliers (such as in India) to create its COVID-19 therapeutic drug remdesivir for 127 nations, most of which are creating nations.
Moreover, TRIPS currently enables nations to impose compulsory licenses to access crucial IP rights, and no nation has availed itself of that capability to date for COVID-19 vaccines or therapies, the lawmakers noted.
The proposed waiver is not restricted to patents on vaccines or therapies for COVID-19 – the waiver would also gut protections for copyrights, industrial styles (e.g., textile patterns or other ornamental styles), and trade secrets. The waiver’s supporters have only supplied vague, unsubstantiated explanations for how waiving IP protections for copyrights or industrial styles would lead to enhanced vaccine or therapeutics availability, they stated.
It is also unclear how a waiver of TRIPS obligations would provide more access to trade secrets and proprietary technologies, which are confidential by definition and ordinarily closely guarded, they stated.
“Gifting away our technological leadership and competitive advantage at a time when the US economy remains vulnerable would be irresponsible and send the wrong message to millions of American taxpayers. The damage would extend beyond even the considerable value of COVID-19 vaccines and medicines, also endangering the far greater value of the jobs and economic growth promised by these IP rights and the advanced technologies they represent,” the Republican Congressmen stated in the letter.
()