COVID-19 and Patent Waivers. Between Fable and History
Abstract
Even though the response of the world's public and private scientific system to the need to develop vaccines against COVID-19 virus has been extraordinary and that intellectual property rights have played a fundamental role in these developments, some governments and Non-Governmental Organizations have presented proposals and requests to limit, suspend or even prohibit these rights related to COVID-19 vaccines.
A significant part of these arguments has been based on citing, as proverbial examples, the cases of vaccines to eradicate poliomyelitis and the invention of monoclonal antibodies, arguing that the developers refused to patent these inventions as an altruistic gesture for the benefit of mankind, guaranteeing wide access and low cost.
However, the historical review of the scientific developments of Jonas Salk and Albert Sabin for the polio vaccines and of César Milstein (together with Georges Köhler) for the invention of monoclonal antibodies and their relationship with the respective patent applications, does not allow us to identify a desire not to patent in two cases, nor a cause-effect relationship in the three cases. Justifying the request to limit vaccine patents for COVID-19 in these three historical cases is not only unfounded, but also omits that the lack of patenting caused these inventions to remain in the public domain, with pharmaceutical companies and not academic institutions being the main beneficiaries in economic terms.
The existence of patents on these inventions, on the contrary, would have assured their developers exclusive rights to control market variables including the price of products, license their inventions to whomever they wished and apply minimal royalties to redirect them into virtuous circles of invention, development and innovation.
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