I am reposting a good article by my friend Philip and his buddy Mark.
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See also:
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Messing with IP rules may affect COVID-19 response
April 8, 2020 | 5:20 pm
By Prof. Mark Schultz and Philip Stevens
With around a third of the world’s population in
lockdown, humanity desperately needs new treatments to turn the tide against
COVID-19. Our hopes depend on sensible coordination between the government and
private sector.
Government and the private sector have essential roles to
play. With irreplaceable expertise in practical research, clinical trials,
manufacturing and distribution, the private sector knows how to take treatments
from lab to bedside.
Public sector leadership, meanwhile, can direct resources
where they are most needed, clearing obstacles and coordinating efforts.
Globally, researchers are racing to develop technologies
to keep people out of intensive care and allow health systems to cope. Their
tireless efforts fuel hopes of a treatment to ease the worst symptoms within
weeks, and a vaccine within 18 months.
The private sector is rising to this Herculean research
and development effort. At least 20 companies are conducting clinical trials of
potential treatments, with a further six racing to be the first to find a
vaccine.
Many governments are working to quickly clear the
approval path for desperately needed treatments. Brazil is removing regulatory
bottlenecks by relying on approvals for medicines in other major markets. We
hope other countries will follow.
Crucially, public health authorities are collecting data,
sharing vital information, and directing treatments where they are most needed.
Public-private coordination will give us a fighting
chance.
But campaigning by health NGOs such as Médecins Sans Frontières
and the UN-funded South Centre is pressuring governments into drastic action.
They are calling for new legislation to pre-emptively confiscate the
intellectual property (IP) of any coronavirus treatment yet to be invented, in
the hope that treatment will be free for all.
This short-sightedness has struck already. Canada, Chile,
Ecuador, and Israel have already moved to suspend IP rights such as patents for
new COVID-19 treatments with others set to follow. The Philippines may follow.
Crisis demands extraordinary efforts, but these populist
proposals risk undermining the global system for developing and delivering
urgent treatments.
For instance, drug makers must spend millions to ramp up
manufacture for any new treatment. Yet this is fraught with commercial risk.
Kenneth Kaitin, director of the Tufts Center for the study of drug development,
says: “You don’t want to invest a lot in manufacturing before you know you are
going to have a drug on the market. [Yet] you want to make sure you can manufacture
as much as needed, perhaps hundreds of thousands of doses at the end of the
day.”
IP rights enable firms to mobilise the money for these
massive manufacturing and supply chain investments and manage that risk.
IP is also vital to turning a promising idea into a real
treatment. Dr. Derrick Rossi is the founder of Moderna, a young biotech company
that brought the first potential COVID-19 vaccine to clinical trials in record
time. We asked him recently if the government could replace the private sector
in bringing treatments to patients. His response: “not a chance.”
Funding basic research is key, but just the start.
“Academics are good at academia and fundamental science. They are not good at
developing drugs for patients,” says Dr. Rossi. Nor do governments have the
expertise, facilities, or resources to take a new treatment to market, and they
usually cannot tolerate the risk of losing massive amounts of money on
treatments that often don’t work out.
The existence of IP rights has enabled a rapid response
to COVID-19 by the private sector. Companies are looking afresh at old drugs in
their patent portfolios that never made it. Others are investigating
repurposing existing medicines for other diseases. Short term, they offer the
best hope of an effective COVID-19 treatment.
IP rights have not stood in the way so far. The UK will
shortly make available millions of new antibody tests at minimal cost.
Investigations continue into the usefulness of chloroquine, a malaria drug
whose patent has long expired. A promising HIV drug has been licensed for
global generic production by its US owner. And many of the other existing drugs
that are being repurposed for COVID-19 are off-patent.
The private sector is mobilizing not for their share
prices, but because it’s the right thing to do. But removing IP rights will
only inject uncertainty into an already difficult picture.
Technology will
play the key role in allowing us to get back to our normal lives. But globally,
we need governments to lead and not get distracted by counterproductive ideas.
Prof. Mark Schultz
is the Goodyear Tire & Rubber Company Chair in Intellectual Property Law,
University of Akron School of Law. Philip Stevens is Executive Director of the
Geneva Network.
---------------See also:
IPR and Innovation 44, Plain packaging on sweets, soda -- impact on investment and health, June 04, 2019
IPR and Innovation 45, PH IPR courts, BOI-IPO, GII 2019, August 6, 2019
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