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Vaccine access and vaccination rates are high in high-to-upper-income countries but remain low to nonexistent among lower-income and lower-resource countries.
At current global vaccination rates, it will take 4.6 years to achieve worldwide herd immunity against COVID-19. This lengthy time gap will likely allow variants of the virus to develop and spread, potentially rendering current vaccines ineffective.
Treating vaccines as public goods rather than market commodities
is the way to improve vaccine equity. This may involve scaling up existing vaccination distribution programs, developing new ones, and temporarily waiving vaccine patent protections.
At least 159 countries have begun their COVID-19 vaccine rollout. Some, like the United Kingdom, are well on their way to vaccinating a majority of the at-risk population.
In its first patent decision of 2021 (
IPCom v Vodafone [2021] EWCA Civ 205), the Court of Appeal narrowed the scope of the rarely invoked Crown use defence to patent infringement.
So far, the decision has avoided much comment. This article reports the court s findings and considers the decision s implications, which may extend beyond the telecoms industry to other areas, such as the life sciences sector, which is particularly significant in the context of the COVID-19 pandemic.
Facts
IPCom was a non-practising entity which acquired a portfolio of telecoms patents from Robert Bosch in 2007. Over the course of the decade prior to the case, it actively enforced some of these patents against several mobile phone manufacturers (eg, Nokia and HTC) across Europe and the United Kingdom. This case against Vodafone concerned a patented method for granting authorisation to a mobile device to access a given telecoms channel at a particular time.
Big Pharma Offers Veiled Threats as US Lawmakers Defend COVID-19 Vaccine Patent-Breaking Law
LUCY NICHOLSON
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Sputnik International
https://sputniknews.com/society/202104071082558876-big-pharma-offers-veiled-threats-as-us-lawmakers-defend-covid-19-vaccine-patent-breaking-law/
With much of the Global South expected to lag several years behind Western nations in their COVID-19 vaccination efforts, popular pressure is mounting for Western governments to relax or waive patent laws on the drugs’ formulae, allowing their manufacture abroad, but cutting into pharmaceutical giants’ profits.
On Monday, the comment period for revising the Bayh-Dole Act, a 1980 health care law allowing the US government to “march in” and break patents for drugs made using federal funds if regulators determine the price is exorbitantly high. The change, initiated by former US President Donald Trump, would weaken the act by denying the federal government the right to do so based on price alo