Will patents subdue the treatment for COVID-19?

With the global cases crossing 2,397,216 and death toll breaching 162,956, the race to produce the right medicines is on. Many pharmaceutical companies are struggling to develop a vaccine or drugs to treat people infected with COVID-19. However, the development of a vaccine or drug requires a considerable amount of investment. To cover this enormous cost, companies seek and enforce patents that can be later used to charge higher prices.

The system of patents and intellectual property rights was made integral to the medicine regulatory policy to incentivise companies to invest in their research and development and trigger growth through the spirit of competitiveness. However, this practice is pushing companies to research the treatment of those diseases which will be most profitable. This has led to multilayered protection of medicines through dozens of patents.

Although recent development signals that the treatment for COVID-19 may soon materialise, its

existence does not guarantee its affordability by everyone. It may confine to the ones capable of spending a huge amount to procure it. These vaccines and treatments will be entombed in the thicket of patents by pharmaceutical companies. Hence, a need for waiving off all sorts of proprietary rights arises, to expedite the dissemination of testing kits, medicines, and vaccines.

Brook Baker, a professor of Law at the Northeastern University expresses how the sharing of intellectual property rights by pharmaceutical companies can accelerate the research, and eventually make the treatment more accessible. Sharing of these legally protected and cautiously reserved trade secrets will enable scientists to work together. This pooling of knowledge by great minds will bring a good for society as a whole.

With the pandemic raging, it’s essential to shrug off all profiteering motives and work in synergy to combat this crisis. So, many companies are being responsive to this and have stopped enforcing their patents while others are still fighting for exclusivity.

Kriti Vishwakarma