IP for Justice: A tribute to Martin Luther King Jr

Part 1

? Rahul Dutta | August 30, 2022 | 5th?Issue

Faith is taking the first step even when you don’t see the whole staircase.?~ Martin Luther King Jr.

In the recent past, two events put a question mark on the modern systems of governance being propogated across the world as the best.?

The first took place in Afghanistan. In August 2021, the Taliban appeared from nowhere to conquer Afghans against their free will. It was triggered by the withdrawal of the US forces. The US invaded Afghanistan in 2001 post 9/11 attack and stayed over there for over two decades before having a truce with the Taliban. The US invaded Afghanistan when the Taliban were ruling Afghanistan in 1996. None of the masters of the destiny of the common man of Afghanistan in the last couple of decades were chosen by the Afghan public. The downfall of Kabul on August 15, 2021, was the shattering of hearts, hopes, and whatnot for the common citizens of Afghanistan who were running like rats in a sinking ship.

The second event took place in the most powerful symbol of power, the White House, the presidential palace in Washington D.C. on January 6, 2022. The supporters of the US President Mr. Donald Trump stunned the world by taking over the White House to pressurize Congress to not certifying President-elect Mr. Joe Biden's victory. It was unprecedented.

These two events happened at barely an interval of six months. They showed the world the true face of progress made by humans for governance, coexistence, and establishing the rule of law. Were the entire theories of law and political science farce? In the light of dreams of modernity, where virtues like, respect, honor, equality, freedom, rule of law, and rule of common collective will be showcased, were fake to rule in a more sophisticated manner in the cages of political democracy. The institutions of governance based on theories of socialism, communism, and capitalism, all were devised to fail.?

Life's most persistent and urgent question is, 'What are you doing for others??~ Martin Luther King Jr.

The Covid pandemic challenged the progress made by science and technology, especially with regard to saving people’s lives. In an unprecedented move, all countries closed their international borders in response to the pandemic leading to the widespread humanitarian crisis in terms of leaving people stranded in foreign destinations all of a sudden having to fend for themselves. As per the data of?https://ourworldindata.org/tourism ,?1.8 billion?people travel internationally every year.??It means, on average, on a daily basis 2.7397 million people are in a foreign country.

The attempt to confine people on the basis of their cities, states, and countries in the name of ‘lockdown’ brought the people, especially those not at home brought people to their knees. People like, migrant workers, students in hostels, and international travelers all faced a homeless situation for an indefinite time period. A dark period for humanity.

When people across the world were scared and dying, it was unfortunate to see country-wise, Olympics styled, score card of covid infected, and death on daily basis. The world fragmented in political boundaries failed miserably on even understanding that the global family is facing a pandemic. The legend Martin Luther King Jr almost half a century back taught ‘Life’s most persistent and urgent question is, ‘What are you doing for others? The world could just appreciate his message but failed to implement it. In Martin Luther King Jr's home country the US President was busy propagating ‘America First’ after winning the Presidential election.?

According to?WHO , so far around 6.5 million people lost their lives due to covid. Some died of covid and others due to the scare created by the media and the government machinery.

It was feared that India where around 1.5 billion people live on just 2.3% of the global land of the world would suffer the most. But the country did fairly well.

According to the website?https://www.worlddata.info/developing-countries.php ?quoting IMF, there are 152 developing countries with a population of around 6.69 billion.?

As per IMF, there is a?‘Forth World’ ?of 47 countries struggling to live below the poverty line. The fourth world, formed by the 47 least developed countries shares 1.08 billion people.

The population of the third world and the fourth world amounts to 7.777 billion people. The world population is around 8 billion. It means just 230 million people are citizens of the first world! However, the 27 advanced economies form the First World where the?UN Development Index is at or above 0.8.?

The individualistic society of the first world countries were the worst sufferers of Covid-19. It is very strange to find that ‘having a little' of the third world and ‘living without’ of the fourth world provided better resistance to the Covid-19 pandemic. It may be due to less degree of media-hyped covid scare and data unavailability.?

Life survives and perhaps develops better resistance in adversaties, this could be one of the reasons for better survival in the third and the fourth world countries.

Nothing in the world is more dangerous than sincere ignorance and conscientious stupidity.?~ Martin Luther King Jr

During the pandemic, people were desperately waiting for a remedy for the unknown, invisible virus that became the name of death. Two countries, India and South Africa moved a?proposal ?to face the Covid-19 pandemic for a temporary IP waiver at the World Trade Organization (WTO). Covid-19 was declared a pandemic on March 11, 2020, and the proposal for the temporary waiver from the provisions of the Trade-Related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights (TRIPS) was moved on October 2, 2020. Till then enough damage had taken place and no hope was visible distantly.

The?Pharma Industry ?of the US approached the US President against this ‘unfortunate’ proposal of India and South Africa that proposed temporary suspension of the TRIPS provisions till the widespread vaccination is in place globally. Contrary to their tag line ‘Research, Progress, Hope’, the Pharma Organisation, asserted that?Intellectual property protections have been essential not only to speed the research and development of new treatments and vaccines but also to facilitate sharing of technology and information to scale up vaccine manufacturing to meet global needs.?Meeting the global need was a business opportunity to profiteer with the investment in the Covid-19 vaccine research. The letter to the US President further states that?the U.S. government has stood alongside other governments—including the European Union, United Kingdom, Japan, Canada, Switzerland, Brazil, and Norway—to oppose this waiver. We urge your Administration to maintain this longstanding support for innovation and American jobs by continuing to oppose the TRIPS IP waiver.?The ‘developed world’ was against the TRIPS provisions waiver proposal of India and South Africa. The discussion on the proposal started in October 2020, and yielded favorable results to the proposal in the?Ministerial Decision on the TRIPS Agreement ?held on June 22, 2022, by acceding to the proposal. By that time Covid-19 was almost gone!

Here, the interesting point is that pharmaceutical patents do not come to the markets like this. Firstly, as per PatSeer records, only 155 patent applications were filed for Covid-19 Vaccines since the dramatic emergence of the Covid-19 pandemic. These were merely patent applications without any substantive rights. The second and more rigorous phase in the pharma industry for bringing a product into the market is Clinical Trials. The Pharma companies were insisting the US President oppose the TRIPS rights waiver proposal raised at the WTO for those rights that were not in existence at that time. Mind it, IP rights are private rights. The welfare of the public duty is a public obligation of the State. The Pharma industry of the US was trying to influence the US State to forgo the public duty towards her own citizens and as a most powerful country towards the rest of the world for the safeguard of their future patent rights, the nature of which upon creation would have been private rights. The profit crazy Pharma Industry of the US forgot the very fact that it owes its very existence to the public. God forbid, if there is no public, then there would not be any Pharma industry too. The step of TRIPS provisions temporary waiver proposal of India was purely for the benefit of the other countries. Indian Patent Law is equipped with the?Compulsory License ?regime for facing pandemic-like situations. India could have easily granted compulsory licenses to the domestic industry without any legal controversy.

The?TRIPS Agreement , acts under the aegis of WTO as the international IP law, in the opening paragraph of its preamble states as follows:

“Desiring to reduce distortions and impediments to international trade and taking into account the need to promote effective and adequate protection of intellectual property rights, and to ensure that measures and procedures to enforce?intellectual property rights do not themselves become barriers to legitimate trade”.

India did not stop with floating a proposal at the WTO. India, in the true spirit of a welfare State, has so far administered 212 Crore (1 billion = 1000 Crore) Covid-19 vaccine ‘free of cost’ to her citizens and thus protecting 94.2 crore people so far. Simultaneously, India shared?1484.9 million?shots of her Covid-19 Vaccine with 101 countries ?including the developed world countries like the US, Australia, New Zealand, Netherlands, and the UK.

Indian version of fighting against the Covid-19 pandemic was the biggest test so far as a welfare state in sync with the ‘Maha Upanishad’ , in a very popular verse 6.71-75 stating as following:

aya??nija??paro veti ga?anā laghucetasām??

udāracaritānā??tu vasudhaiva ku?umbakam?

The English translation of it states as:

“This is mine, that is his, say the small minded,

The wise believe that the entire world is a family.”

Perhaps Martin Luther King Jr did not read this verse of Maha Upanishad, but his soul was surely in sync with it.

to be continued in the next News Letter...

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