What’s yours is ours: waiving intellectual property protections for COVID-19 vaccines

Jecker, Nancy S.; Atuire, Caesar

doi:10.1136/medethics-2021-107555

Cited by 30 publications

(13 citation statements)

References 8 publications

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“…In response, vaccines are in fact the final, translational part of product development that is years in the making and involves many people’s labours and large public sector investments. 18 Simply put, science is a social product. Invention does not occur in a vacuum but depends on the thoughts and ideas of those who came before.…”

Section: Replies To Objectionsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Three for me and none for you? An ethical argument for delaying COVID-19 boosters

Jecker

Lederman

2021

J Med Ethics

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This paper argues in support of the WHO’s proposal to forego COVID-19 booster shots until 10% of people in every country are fully vaccinated. The Ethical Argument section shows that we save the most lives and ensure the least amount of suffering by allocating doses first to unvaccinated people. It also argues that there is a duty to support decent lives and to promote health equity, which establish that refraining from boosters is a requirement of justice, not charity. The Replies to Objections section answers objections that appeal to pragmatism, nationalism, ownership, scientific advancement, self-interest, semantics and futility. The Conclusion section emphasizes that for now, wealthy nations should not boost vaccinated people’s immunity and should instead send doses to poorer nations where they are most urgently needed.

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Section: Replies To Objectionsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Three for me and none for you? An ethical argument for delaying COVID-19 boosters

Jecker

Lederman

2021

J Med Ethics

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“…Gates argued developing nations lacked capacity to efficiently ramp-up vaccine manufacturing, and vaccine quality might suffer 12. Others defended temporarily waiving vaccine patents, reasoning that drug companies could earn less profit and still be incentivised to innovate, and that expanding manufacturing capacity was essential preparation for future pandemics 13. While ethical debate continued, vaccine candidates remained largely under the control of for-profit drug companies.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Towards a new model of global health justice: the case of COVID-19 vaccines

2022

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This paper questions an exclusively state-centred framing of global health justice and proposes a multilateral alternative. Using the distribution of COVID-19 vaccines to illustrate, we bring to light a broad range of global actors up and down the chain of vaccine development who contribute to global vaccine inequities. Section 1 (Background) presents an overview of moments in which diverse global actors, each with their own priorities and aims, shaped subsequent vaccine distribution. Section 2 (Collective action failures) characterises collective action failures at each phase of vaccine development that contributed to global vaccine disparities. It identifies as critical the task of establishing upstream strategies to coordinate collective action at multiple stages across a range of actors. Section 3 (A Multilateral model of global health governance) takes up this task, identifying a convergence of interests among a range of stakeholders and proposing ways to realise them. Appealing to a responsibility to protect (R2P), a doctrine developed in response to human rights atrocities during the 1990s, we show how to operationalise R2P through a principle of subsidiarity and present ethical arguments in support of this approach.

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“…The advanced economies (and home to the major pharmaceutical MNEs) were unwilling to waive IPRs on the new vaccines, while much of the developing world sought to either partially or fully waive IP enforcement of Covid-19 technologies, to allow universal access to IP and more equitably located production capacity. Indeed, despite considerable negotiation, as of mid-2022, no consensus has been achieved, either among or between the MNEs, the home countries of these MNEs, or among the developing countries themselves, despite the active engagement of a variety of supranational institutions, NGOs, and interest groups (Jecker, 2022;Jecker & Atuire, 2021). It is self-evident, therefore, that IPRs are a critical field of study in international business, strategy, and economics, and that establishing and enforcing IPRs form a central aspect of the strategies and policies of MNEs and governments.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Towards integrating country- and firm-level perspectives on intellectual property rights

et al. 2022

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Intellectual property rights (IPRs) are of critical importance in international business. The implications for firm strategy and for policymakers are rarely aligned because the optimal level of IPR protection can be quite different from the country-and the firm-level perspectives. There is considerable heterogeneity in firm strategies, the spatial distribution of their innovation activities, and their IPR portfolios. There is still greater variation between countries, their IPR legislation and enforcement efforts, as well as their industrial and development policies. For firms, sustaining firm-specific advantages (FSAs) depends on their ability to create and extract rent from their knowledge assets, and this involves deliberate interfirm cooperation, careful location choices, and talent recruitment and retention. At the country level, the attractiveness of countries for MNEs is shaped by the provision of country-specific advantages such as IPR protection and its effective enforcement, but the kinds of IPR regimes that are optimal to attract inward investment can be disadvantageous for building domestic firm capacity, and vice-versa. Although firm IPR strategies and IPR regimes are clearly interlinked, the literature integrating across these two levels has been underdeveloped, and we propose a framework to guide future research.

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What’s yours is ours: waiving intellectual property protections for COVID-19 vaccines

Cited by 30 publications

References 8 publications

Three for me and none for you? An ethical argument for delaying COVID-19 boosters

Three for me and none for you? An ethical argument for delaying COVID-19 boosters

Towards a new model of global health justice: the case of COVID-19 vaccines

Towards integrating country- and firm-level perspectives on intellectual property rights

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