It has recently been reported (see recent Reuters article) that the United States, European Union, India and South Africa have reached a consensus on key elements of an intellectual property waiver for Covid-19 vaccines.

The article reports that the agreement is still informal and needs further work before becoming an official proposal. Any proposal would need to be agreed by all 164 WTO member states, as reported by the WTO itself.

FICPI’s Executive Committee considered this issue in a virtual meeting in May 2021, and passed a resolution (https://ficpi.org/system/files/EXCO-EB21-RES-001.pdf) urging the rejection of the much broader waiver discussed at that time and to focus efforts on licensing the relevant IP rights instead.

Once the text of this new proposal is available, FICPI will review this.

Next steps

Consider becoming involved with FICPI's Study & Work Committee on Biotechnology and Pharmaceuticals (CET 5), find out more here.

FICPI's view and involvement   

FICPI uniquely combines education and advocacy on topics around patents and trade marks, with a focus on developing the professional excellence of its individual members. FICPI forums, committees and meetings are opportunities to gather insights from the international IP attorney community on a wide variety of issues, whether practice-related or topics of patent and trade mark law. 

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