Sen. Coons vs. the Covid Vaccine Thieves

A Democrat rebuts the claims of those who want to steal U.S. intellectual property

WSJ editorial.

"Progressives have been pushing on an open door in the Biden Presidency and Democratic Congress, and some bad policy is the result. So it’s good to see at least some resistance in the Democratic Party to another destructive idea now advancing politically: Suspending intellectual property for Covid vaccines at the World Trade Organization.

The resister is Delaware Sen. Chris Coons, who warned Thursday in a web conference at the Center for Strategic and International Studies that “IP rights are under both external and internal attack.” He’s right. South Africa and India last year tossed a grenade at vaccine IP rights at the WTO with a resolution that would allow low-income countries to break patents during the pandemic.

The resolution has support from some 80 developing countries, nonprofits and even Democratic Senators, including Elizabeth Warren, Bernie Sanders, Richard Blumenthal and Raphael Warnock. They say waiving IP protections is necessary to surge vaccines to low-income countries and end the pandemic.

“Allowing countries to manufacture locally will expedite access to vaccines and treatment, prevent unnecessary deaths, expedite global vaccination efforts, and facilitate a stronger, faster economic recovery,” 10 Democratic Senators wrote to President Biden last week.

This couldn’t be more misguided. Existing WTO rules allow low-income countries to compel pharmaceutical companies to license their IP for treatments and vaccines that are essential to public health during epidemics. Covid vaccines developed by Western companies, however, are complicated biologic products. Merely giving low-income countries a vaccine recipe would raise serious safety concerns.

That’s why vaccine developers have licensed their IP to many manufacturers around the world, including India and South Africa, with agreements that maintain strict controls over production. But ramping up the manufacturing of vaccines and their ingredients takes time. As Mr. Coons explained, “some of the barriers to scaling up manufacturing and distribution of vaccines and therapeutics at the scale and on the timeline the world needs are just that—barriers to manufacturing and distribution.”

He added that “the willingness of the key inventors and developers” of Covid vaccines and treatments to license, manufacture and distribute them “at cost or as donations” suggests that “it’s not IP rights that are really centrally at issue.” He added that “if anything, IP has enabled historic licensing and partnerships” and been “a facilitator of critical, cutting-edge innovation.”

Breaking IP protections would risk “losing the private sector investment and development that’s critical to this moment of personalized medicine, of breakthrough vaccines, of breakthrough medical diagnostics,” Mr. Coons warned. “And I think, frankly, I think the world would suffer as a result.”

Once released, trade secrets on biologics are gone for good. Handing China the IP for the Pfizer and Moderna mRNA vaccines would allow it to recreate the technology for other diseases. India recently revealed its self-interested motives by limiting exports of AstraZeneca’s vaccine to serve its own population.

Let’s hope this is one issue on which Mr. Biden ignores the left and heeds Mr. Coons."