Pharma Furor After WTO Eases Patent Rights for COVID-19 Vaccines

June 22, 2022--Researched by Industrial Info Resources (Sugar Land, Texas)--The World Trade Organization's (WTO) action last week to ease intellectual property protection for COVID-19 vaccines and therapeutics has caused an uproar across the globe. Such a move has been in discussion for a couple of years, but until now, nothing was official.

The stated point of the move was to ensure global availability of the drugs, including lower-income countries, by bypassing a company's patents on vaccines and other products. Essentially, this will allow manufacturers in developing countries to override patents on the vaccines and export them for sale in other lower-income countries.

While some of the countries that would expect to benefit from this are indeed supportive of the plan, the drug industry and trade associations are not.