The patent maze of COVID 19 vaccines

ABSTRACT

Introduction: NGOs and governments of some countries have demanded suspension of patents protection of COVID-19 vaccines and the underlying technology to enhance worldwide access. At the same time, companies actually developing and producing COVID-19 vaccines have to navigate the patent landscape and have to deal with 3rd party patents.

Areas covered: This article discusses these different aspects regarding patent protection of COVID-19 vaccines. Patent searches have been carried out in Espacenet and the ORBIT database. Different search strings were used by the author, based on his own background knowledge.

Expert opinion: SARS-CoV 2 was for the first time fully described on 10 January 2020, so it is so far not possible to determine if, and by whom, patent applications were filed for respective vaccines. On that background, allegations that patents would be responsible for insufficient access to the vaccine in particular in developing countries are baseless. Even the key players are facing contraints caused by third-party patents, and legal disputes are already ongoing. Anyway, the bigger obstacle for worldwide equitable vaccine distribution seems to reside in know how transfer and production capacities, as ramping up production requires considerable efforts.

KEYWORDS:

• Patent
• covid 19
• vaccine
• sars cov 2

Article Highlights

• NGOs and governments of some countries have demanded suspension of patent protection for COVID-19 vaccines and the underlying technology.

• Companies actually developing and producing COVID-19 vaccines have to navigate the patent landscape and have to deal with third-party patents.

• SARS-CoV 2 was for the first time fully described on 10 January 2020, so it is so far not possible to determine if, and by whom, patent applications were filed for respective vaccines.

• Hence, allegations that patents would be responsible for insufficient access to the vaccine in particular in developing countries are baseless.

• The bigger obstacle for worldwide equitable vaccine distribution seems to reside in know how transfer and production capacities, as ramping up production requires considerable efforts.

Declaration of interest

The author, though working as a legal counsel for some of the companies mentioned herein (yet in different fields of technology), has no relevant affiliations or financial involvement with any organization or entity with a financial interest in or financial conflict with the subject matter or materials discussed in the manuscript. This includes employment, consultancies, honoraria, stock ownership or options, expert testimony, grants or patents received or pending, or royalties.

Supplementary material

Supplemental data for this article can be accessed here.

Reviewer disclosures

Peer reviewers on this manuscript have no relevant financial or other relationships to disclose.

Additional information

Funding

This paper was not funded.