COVID-19: shy agreement on lifting of Patents at WTO

The text ratified Friday, June 17, less ambitious than the initial proposal for India and South Africa, confirms the right of developing countries to grant production licenses to local manufacturers by passing by ‘Authorization of patent holders, but only for vaccines.

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“A good compromise always leaves everyone angry,” said many years ago, the American designer Bill Watterson, in one of his humorous comics Calvin and Hobbes. The agreement negotiated on the tenderness on the temporary lifting of patents of vaccines against the COVVI-19, by the 164 members of the World Trade Organization (WTO), is a new illustration.

Hailed by the Director General of the Geneva Organization, Ngozi Okonjo-iweala, during her closing speech of the 12 e session of the WTO, the agreement aroused reactions Clearly less enthusiastic, both among pharmaceutical industrialists, opposed to any derogation from the agreement on the aspects of intellectual property rights which affect trade, as with associations, collectives, NGOs and activists of various horizons, who have been calling for almost two years to much wider measures. “We are disappointed that a real renunciation of intellectual property, proposed in October 2020, covering all the medical tools against COVVI-19 and including all countries, could not be agreed, even during a pandemic that cost the Life to more than 15 million people, “regrets Christos Christou, international president of doctors without borders.

The proposal adopted by the member states of the WTO, if it constitutes a timid advance, turns out to be much less ambitious than the initial proposal made by India and South Africa in October 2020. Noting The growing inequalities of access to the products allowing to fight against the COVID-19 between the countries of the North and those of the South, the two states claimed a lifting of the whole of the intellectual property of vaccines, diagnostic tests and drugs, in order to to allow less wealthy countries to produce them on their soil to dispose of them.

restricted agreement

The agreement adopted Friday, June 17 is much more restricted: it confirms the right of developing countries to grant production licenses to local manufacturers by doing the authorization of patent holders, but only for vaccines , and for a limited period of five years. Therapeutic tests and treatments, which are also essential tools for the fight against the virus, are currently excluded. Their case will be examined by the member states of the Geneva institution, “at the latest”, in six months.

concluded more than two years after the start of the pandemic, the impact of this agreement should prove to be all the more limited as after the shortage of vaccines against the COVVI-19 noted in 2021, the time is Today at abundance, we recall on the side of the Big Pharma. Standing wind, the International Federation of Manufacturers and Pharmaceutical Associations denounces an “empty shell”, which, according to its general manager, Thomas Cueni, sends a dangerous signal to industrialists who innovate.

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