18 March 2022
Not Much of a Waiver
Seventeen months after South Africa and India initiated the TRIPS waiver proposal, the negotiating “quad” (South Africa, India, US and the EU) is reported to have reached a compromise at the WTO. The text of the proposal was leaked this week. From a legal perspective, the outcome of the compromise is more muddled and confusing than clarifying, although it claims its aim to be the latter. As it presently stands, the text is not so much a waiver of TRIPS obligations than a modification of existing obligations and conditions of exemptions around patents, as well as an introduction of additional requirements. Continue reading >>
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31 October 2021
From Charity to Justice in the Pandemic
Waiving intellectual property rights is not a panacea in the current pandemic, but it may remove obstacles and, importantly, would send the right message. Germany should therefore change its position and support a decision in the World Trade Organization (WTO) to that effect. Donations are good and necessary in the short-term, but they must not be mistaken for acts justice in international relations. Continue reading >>05 October 2021
FRAND Terms for Pandemic-essential Intellectual Property Rights
Our international norms are arguably ill adapted to emergencies such as pandemics. In this contribution I discuss a potential remedy for one related challenge, namely a cooperation amongst competitors for the accelerated development of vaccines. A way to foster cooperation could be the use of fair, reasonable and non-discriminatory (‘FRAND’) terms to the licensing of pandemic-essential intellectual property rights (IPR). Continue reading >>
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