U.S. backs waiving intellectual property rules on vaccines

WASHINGTON — The Biden administration is throwing its support behind efforts to waive intellectual property protections for COVID19 vaccines in an effort to speed the end of the pandemic.

United States Trade Representative Katherine Tai announced the government’s position in a Wednesday statement, amid World Trade Organization talks over easing global trade rules to enable more countries to produce more of the lifesaving vaccines.

“The Administration believes strongly in intellectual property protections, but in service of ending this pandemic, supports the waiver of those protections for COVID19 vaccines,” Tai said in the statement.

But she cautioned that it would take time to reach the required global “consensus” to waive the protections under WTO rules, and U.S. officials said it would not have an immediate effect on the global supply of COVID19 shots.

“This is a global health crisis, and the extraordinary circumstances of the COVID19 pandemic call for extraordinary measures,” said Tai. “The Administration’s aim is to get as many safe and effective vaccines to as many people as fast as possible.”

Tai’s announcement comes hours after WTO DirectorGeneral Ngozi OkonjoIweala spoke to a closeddoor meeting of ambassadors from developing and developed countries that have been wrangling over the issue, but agree on the need for wider access to COVID19 treatments, WTO spokesman Keith Rockwell said.

The WTO’s General Council — made up of ambassadors — was taking up the pivotal issue of a temporary waiver for intellectual property protections on COVID19 vaccines and other tools, which South Africa and India first proposed in October. The idea has gained support in the developing world and among some progressive lawmakers in the West.

Rockwell said a WTO panel on intellectual property was set to take up the waiver proposal again at a “tentative” meeting later this month, before a formal meeting June 89.

No consensus — which is required under WTO rules — was expected to emerge from the ambassadors’ twoday meeting Wednesday and Thursday. But Rockwell pointed to a change in tone after months of wrangling.

“I would say that the discussion was far more constructive, pragmatic. It was less emotive and less finger pointing than it had been in the past,” Rockwell said, citing a surge in cases in places like India.

Authors of the proposal, which has faced resistance from many countries with influential pharmaceutical and biotech industries, have been revising it in hopes of making it more palatable.

The argument, part of a longrunning debate about intellectual property protections, centers on lifting patents, copyrights and protections for industrial design and confidential information to help expand the production and deployment of vaccines during supply shortages. The aim is to suspend the rules for several years, just long enough to beat down the pandemic.