[GOAL] COVID IP waiver request: interesting but not entirely informed?
I note with interest the request from India and South Africa for a full waiver of IP rights with respect to anything relating to COVID: https://docs.wto.org/dol2fe/Pages/SS/directdoc.aspx?filename=q:/IP/C/W669.pdf&Open=True This sounds like the kind of initiative that OA enthusiasts might well have been involved in or support. The reason for this post is that I am hoping GOAL readers might have some background or perspective on this. Also, I worry about OA enthusiasm and the strength of the OA movement distracting people in power from the most effective ways to address the pandemic, and in the medium to long term, the impact this could have on the OA movement per se. Why do I characterize this as a distraction from effective COVID-19 action? One example: in Canada, early action on vaccination was delayed because the country has little to no vaccine manufacturing capacity. (We have since caught up, through purchase because we are a rich country, and are among the most vaccinated country in the world). Full waivers on IP by every vaccine manufacturer in the world would not have made any difference to this situation. What will make a difference in future is the development of vaccine manufacturing capacity in Canada. This will happen, most notably a forthcoming factory by the maker of the Moderna vaccine. In this context, pushing the government to support full IP waiver rather obviously would not accomplish anything in the reasonably foreseeable future. If I were in government I would see things this way: big pharma is helpful - finding, manufacturing and distributing vaccines in a time frame that is unheard of, while IP waiver advocates seem like nice, well-meaning people who are not making much sense or offering viable short-term solutions. My personal perspective is that all health care is a human right and should not be left to the corporate sector for profit-making. However, in a crisis the most important thing to do is to find and implement solutions. Fixing the economy can wait. Switching pharmaceutical development and distribution from a profit to a people centered basis is a laudable goal. This will probably take longer to accomplish than flipping scholarly communication production from the demand to the supply side for OA. The world should not have to wait decades for COVID relief. The WHO letter mentions but does not request what I suggest is a more likely approach to avoiding IP interference with addressing the pandemic in the short term: compulsory licensing. This is a flexibility already permitted under TRIPS, as the World Trade Organization (WTO) explains here: https://www.wto.org/english/tratop_e/trips_e/public_health_faq_e.htm My personal preference is to do away with "intellectual property" altogether. However, in the short term it makes more sense to advocate for full use of a flexibility that is already available rather than pushing for a major global policy change that, it should be obvious, would be a hard sell. To get back to why I characterize this as a distraction: India & South Africa are asking for a policy change that is a hard sell when the policy per se is not likely to do very much to address the pandemic in the short term, and with respect to policy, there is an existing solution that would be a much easier sell (compulsory licensing) Background or comments, anyone? Dr. Heather Morrison Associate Professor, School of Information Studies, University of Ottawa Cross-appointed, Department of Communication Professeur Agrégé, École des Sciences de l'Information, Université d'Ottawa Principal Investigator, Sustaining the Knowledge Commons, a SSHRC Insight Project sustainingknowledgecommons.org heather.morri...@uottawa.ca https://uniweb.uottawa.ca/?lang=en#/members/706 ___ GOAL mailing list GOAL@eprints.org http://mailman.ecs.soton.ac.uk/mailman/listinfo/goal
Re: [GOAL] COVID IP waiver request: interesting but not entirely informed?
Il 01/09/21 23:25, Heather Morrison ha scritto: > The WHO letter mentions but does not request what I suggest is a more likely > approach to avoiding IP interference with addressing the pandemic in the > short term: compulsory licensing. This is the official reason used by the EU to block the waiver (or at least it was until Biden came out in support of it and force everyone to change tune). https://www.keionline.org/36300 It's true that the USA could easily implement compulsory licensing overnight, but for other countries it can prove more difficult. There are dozens of articles in the KEI website on this matter, I'm unable to summarise them. It's highly recommended reading. Communia, Wikimedia and others have also supported the extension of waiver to copyright, see most recently: https://www.communia-association.org/2021/03/22/communia-supports-the-wto-trips-waiver-for-covid-19/ Best regards, Federico ___ GOAL mailing list GOAL@eprints.org http://mailman.ecs.soton.ac.uk/mailman/listinfo/goal
Re: [GOAL] COVID IP waiver request: interesting but not entirely informed?
perhaps this might be of interest: in its new research framework programme Horizon Europe the European Commission states this (https://ec.europa.eu/info/funding-tenders/opportunities/docs/2021-2027/common/agr-contr/general-mga_horizon-euratom_en.pdf, p. 102) ... *** Where the call conditions impose additional exploitation obligations in case of a public emergency, the beneficiaries must (if requested by the granting authority) grant for a limited period of time specified in the request, non-exclusive licences — under fair and reasonable conditions — to their results to legal entities that need the results to address the public emergency and commit to rapidly and broadly exploit the resulting products and services at fair and reasonable conditions. This provision applies up to four years after the end of the action. *** As there was no such statement in the model grant agreements of earlier framework programmes, I interpret this regulation a direct reaction to the COVID pandemic... Best regards Ulrich - Am 2. Sep 2021 um 22:07 schrieb Federico Leva (Nemo) nemow...@gmail.com: Il 01/09/21 23:25, Heather Morrison ha scritto: > The WHO letter mentions but does not request what I suggest is a more likely > approach to avoiding IP interference with addressing the pandemic in the > short term: compulsory licensing. This is the official reason used by the EU to block the waiver (or at least it was until Biden came out in support of it and force everyone to change tune). https://www.keionline.org/36300 It's true that the USA could easily implement compulsory licensing overnight, but for other countries it can prove more difficult. There are dozens of articles in the KEI website on this matter, I'm unable to summarise them. It's highly recommended reading. Communia, Wikimedia and others have also supported the extension of waiver to copyright, see most recently: https://www.communia-association.org/2021/03/22/communia-supports-the-wto-trips-waiver-for-covid-19/ Best regards, Federico ___ GOAL mailing list GOAL@eprints.org http://mailman.ecs.soton.ac.uk/mailman/listinfo/goal -- Mit freundlichen Grüßen Dr. Ulrich Herb Saarländische Universitäts- und Landesbibliothek Referent für elektronisches Publizieren und Open Access, Drittmittel-Projekte Postanschrift: Postfach 15 11 41 | 66041 Saarbrücken Besucheranschrift: Campus B1 1 | Raum 10.07. | 66123 Saarbrücken T: +49 681 302-2798 F: +49 681 302-2796 u.h...@sulb.uni-saarland.de www.sulb.uni-saarland.de ___ GOAL mailing list GOAL@eprints.org http://mailman.ecs.soton.ac.uk/mailman/listinfo/goal
Re: [GOAL] COVID IP waiver request: interesting but not entirely informed?
Thank you, Ulrich. The exception does look like it would be helpful in an emergency like COVID, and likely necessary as the default is an expectation of protection of rights and commercial exploitation; this is also on p. 102. There is a sharp contrast in the E.U. and North America between success in achieving OA as the default in dissemination of results and expectation of protecting IP for commercial exploitation. It would be interesting to have meaningful and informed discussion about this. To participate in informed discussion, participants should understand the basics about the different types of IP. For those who may be new to this area, WIPO's "What is intellectual property" page is a good starting point: https://www.wipo.int/about-ip/en/ The Public Library of Science (PLOS) Terms of Use may also be helpful to OA advocates in understanding the different types of IP. Like most fully OA publishers with a firm commitment to open licensing, PLOS is very protective of their own work, including their own text on the website and their trademark. https://www.wipo.int/about-ip/en/ The Google business model of advertising-supported facilitated access to free knowledge and services created by others, made possible by algorithms carefully protected as trade secrets, is another example of how different the various types of IP are. It is not unusual for a single internet search to invoke multiple different types of IP that work in very different fashion. COVID is an interesting case study. My impression (not based on substantive research) is that the world, including the traditional commercial scholarly publishing industry, has made considerable progress in open sharing of information about the virus. There is no doubt still a great deal of room for improvement, but this is an advance and should be celebrated as much. I wonder how much the success of the OA / open data movements to date contributed to the rapid development of COVID vaccines in multiple countries. Manufacturing involves patent law, and the manufacturing industries are very different from scholarly publishing. In the case of COVID vaccine manufacture, even under the current licensing regime, we have instances of what looks to me (as a non-expert) like rapid implementation of manufacture (Johnson & Johnson in Baltimore, more recently a Moderna factory in Spain creating doses for Japan) resulting in contaminated vaccines. This is not helpful in a context where vaccine hesitancy and an anti-vaccination movement are significant barriers to addressing COVID. In this case, simply opening up the rights to manufacture vaccines to anyone could do more harm than good. On the other hand, the profit-driven pharma-as-usual model may be driving a push for booster shots in rich countries that may not be necessary, when the most compassionate and smartest approach (even for the rich countries) is likely shots in arms everywhere (to reduce opportunities for new variants to develop). I see this as a good opportunity for discussion on how IP works in this area and how to do it better. Lessons from the OA movement may or may not be relevant, but understanding how to produce and distribute quality vaccines and other medicines is absolutely essential for informed discussion in this area. GOAL may or may not be the right venue for this discussion. Advice on this would be welcome. best, Dr. Heather Morrison Associate Professor, School of Information Studies, University of Ottawa Cross-appointed, Department of Communication Professeur Agrégé, École des Sciences de l'Information, Université d'Ottawa Principal Investigator, Sustaining the Knowledge Commons, a SSHRC Insight Project sustainingknowledgecommons.org heather.morri...@uottawa.ca https://uniweb.uottawa.ca/?lang=en#/members/706 From: Ulrich Herb Sent: Friday, September 3, 2021 7:36 AM To: goal Cc: Heather Morrison Subject: Re: [GOAL] COVID IP waiver request: interesting but not entirely informed? Attention : courriel externe | external email perhaps this might be of interest: in its new research framework programme Horizon Europe the European Commission states this (https://ec.europa.eu/info/funding-tenders/opportunities/docs/2021-2027/common/agr-contr/general-mga_horizon-euratom_en.pdf, p. 102) ... *** Where the call conditions impose additional exploitation obligations in case of a public emergency, the beneficiaries must (if requested by the granting authority) grant for a limited period of time specified in the request, non-exclusive licences — under fair and reasonable conditions — to their results to legal entities that need the results to address the public emergency and commit to rapidly and broadly exploit the resulting products and services at fair and reasonable conditions. This provision applies up to four years after the end of the action. *** As there was no such
