Mon, May 3rd 2021 9:30am — Mike Masnick Throughout the COVID pandemic, it's been truly shameful to watch how patent maximalists have tried to insist that we just need more patents to deal with COVID -- even though the incredible breakthroughs that brought such quick development of vaccines were not due to patents, but rather the free and open flow of information from a bunch of researchers and scientists who didn't care about whether or not information was locked up for profit, but did care about saving millions of lives. And now that we've got vaccines, we're dealing with significant problems in rolling them out around the world -- and patents are often in the way, holding that rollout back. And we actually have a way of dealing with that: what's known as a TRIPS waiver. TRIPS is the Agreement on Trade-Related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights, which set up a variety of standards among member nations and the WTO regarding intellectual property. I have many problems with TRIPS (and the WTO), but TRIPS does include a process to grant waivers on intellectual property rights. This was in response to (very legitimate!) concerns by less well off nations that rich nations would use the patent system to block access to important life saving medicines.