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How access to Covid-19 vaccines has highlighted the need for the WTO to rebalance its IP rules

Name: Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala becomes first African, first woman director general of WTO
Uploaded: 2021-03-11T01:15:10.000Z
Duration: 2 min 3 s
Description: Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala becomes first African, first woman director general of WTO

There has long been tension in WTO intellectual property rules between exclusive ownership of new knowledge and the need for broad public access

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A woman receives a shot of a Covid-19 vaccine in Bhopal, India, on March 6. India, South Africa and other countries have proposed that the WTO exempt member countries from enforcing some patents and other intellectual property rights for a limited period to help countries contain Covid-19. Photo: EPA-EFE

James Bacchus

James Bacchus is senior fellow with the Centre for International Governance Innovation, adjunct scholar with the Cato Institute, professor at the University of Central Florida, and former chairman of the Appellate Body of the World Trade Organization.

Published: 9:15am, 11 Mar 2021Updated: 9:15am, 11 Mar 2021

The Covid-19 pandemic and vaccine development – as during the height of the HIV/Aids crisis in the 1990s – has brought to the forefront the debate within the World Trade Organization on the need to re-evaluate the balance of WTO intellectual property rules between exclusive ownership of new knowledge and broad public access.

The WTO Agreement on Trade-Related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights, commonly called the Trips Agreement, was completed in 1994 with the negotiated balance stating that IP protection and enforcement should contribute to innovation and technology transfer to the mutual advantage of all.

It should be conducive to social and economic welfare and not prevent WTO members from adopting “measures necessary to protect public health and nutrition, and to promote the public interest in sectors of vital importance to their socio-economic and technological development”.

Given the changes in the global economy, WTO IP rules must be updated to keep up. Disagreements between developed and developing countries over the meaning of the balance and where this line of balance lies, though, are obstacles to modernising the Trips agreement.

Developed countries must understand that the balance between exclusivity and access in the Trips Agreement is a central part of the bargain. They must keep the promise they made to engage in “technical cooperation” with all the least-developed country members of the WTO. In turn, developing countries must realise that their WTO obligations to protect and enforce IP rights are a necessary means to their further development.

To make the balance work in the new pandemic world, all members of the WTO must be willing to make and keep more promises by adding to their obligations in the Trips Agreement so it will be fit for purpose going forward.

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Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala becomes first African, first woman director general of WTO

How access to Covid-19 vaccines has highlighted the need for the WTO to rebalance its IP rules

.css-1mniedq{color:inherit;font-weight:inherit;font-size:inherit;font-family:inherit;line-height:inherit;} There has long been tension in WTO intellectual property rules between exclusive ownership of new knowledge and the need for broad public access

There has long been tension in WTO intellectual property rules between exclusive ownership of new knowledge and the need for broad public access