Noticeably lacking in the G7 communique following its recent U.K. summit is support for a proposed World Trade Organization waiver on intellectual property related to drugs and other medical products used to prevent, contain or treat COVID-19 infections.
The European Commission unveiled its third alternative to providing global access to COVID-19 vaccines and treatments just ahead of the June 8 meeting of the World Trade Organization’s Council for Trade Related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights and the start of the G7 summit.
The May 25 appearance of Francis Collins, director of the U.S. National Institutes of Health, before a congressional committee revolved in large part around the Biden administration’s so-called ARPA-H proposal, but the administration’s proposal to waive intellectual property rights for vaccines was also on tap.
In seeming opposition to U.S. Trade Representative Katherine Tai’s support of a proposed compulsory World Trade Organization intellectual property (IP) waiver on COVID-19-related medical products, U.S. Vice President Kamala Harris signed onto the G20’s May 21 Rome Declaration that commits the member countries to work to defeat the pandemic within the current flexibilities of the TRIPS agreement by promoting voluntary IP licensing agreements, technology and knowledge transfers, and patent pooling on mutually agreed terms.
As infections and deaths continue to surge in some countries so does the demand for unfettered access to the technologies behind COVID-19 vaccines and other medical products. In seeking that access, several countries are stressing the need to develop their own manufacturing capacity as they look beyond the current pandemic.
A grueling day of congressional questions and accusations isn’t the end of a U.S. House Oversight Committee investigation into Abbvie Inc.’s pricing of blockbuster drugs Humira and Imbruvica.
It looks like the two biosimilars referencing Amgen Inc.’s Enbrel (etanercept) will have to wait out the rest of the decade before launching in the U.S. The U.S. Supreme Court declined May 17 to hear Sandoz Inc.’s appeal of last year’s split Federal Circuit ruling affirming the validity of two patents protecting etanercept and its manufacturing methods
More than 150 U.S. patents could be at stake if the World Trade Organization (WTO) were to adopt an intellectual property waiver as originally proposed by India and South Africa.
The Biden administration’s May 5 about-face on the proposed TRIPS waiver of intellectual property (IP) protections for COVID-19-related medical products is not playing well with U.S. industry, EU trading partners and others concerned about the long-term unintended consequences.
Once again, the World Trade Organization (WTO) postponed a decision on a temporary intellectual property (IP) waiver for COVID-19 vaccines and other related medical products.