The Luddites & the Boy who cried Wolf meet the Elephant in the Room

One Person’s Take on the Covid Patent Waiver Proposal

I had been invited to discuss how to finally jump start the Covid vaccination program. I found myself in a crowded, poorly lit room, and I can’t quite tell who’s supposed to be running the meeting.

“Psst! Over here!”, said the voice.

“Who said that?”, I said.

“I did”, said the voice. “I’m just the other side of the elephant.”

I don’t see an elephant, just a big grey thing that makes it impossible for me to see the origin of the voice. I try and squirm past the obstruction, and see where the voice is coming from. I then see the so-called elephant. “What is that thing?” I ask. And before the voice can answer, I add “and don’t tell me it’s an elephant. I know what elephants look like, and that isn’t anything of the sort.”

“OK” says the voice, in an accent which I can’t quite place. It sounds like a mixture of American, Russian, Chinese and Indian. Sort of European too, but not German.

“I’ll tell you. It’s actually not an elephant, but a Trojan Horse”.

“Really?” I respond, somewhat bewildered.

“Yes. It’s the only way we could get them onto our vaccination program planning committee. You know, the Luddites.” As my eyes adjust to the darkness, I make out the presence of a number of angry looking people, each with an implement of some sort: a hammer, a crowbar, and a variety of implements that could be used to cause serious damage to machinery. Yup, they were Luddites ok. I still wasn’t sure why they were here, but then I was distracted by another, more diminutive form. Why, he was only a boy!

“Who’s that boy” I asked.

“Him? He’s the reason we’re all here. We’re not really here to initiate a Covid vaccination program. We’re here to take the fight to big pharma, to the mean companies who only want to make money while withholding the vaccine from major parts of the world. And you know how they’re doing it?”

And before I can say anything, the voice continues. “They’re registering all of their nasty patents, that’s how! But don’t worry, we have the best publicity campaigner in the history of the world. And you know who it is? The Boy who cried Wolf!”

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I’m a staunch supporter of IP rights. Especially when they enable pharmaceutical companies to invest in drug development. I also support the reasonable application of such rights, meaning the provision of patent licenses at fair and equitable terms to those who ask for them.

So far so good. And as the issue purports to be worldwide distribution of vaccines in an equitable manner, then surely the major vaccine developers and manufacturers, such as Pfizer, J&J, Astra Zeneca et al should be engaged by relevant national and international bodies so as to facilitate such distribution. And if the issue is one of local manufacture, then such talks and agreements would also be the way to go.

If the issue is distribution or manufacture, that is.

But it clearly isn’t, and here’s why.

As we know, it can take a while to obtain a patent. But you never know, perhaps the vaccine manufacturers above have been busy procuring patent rights at breakneck speed during the past year.

So I checked out what’s been going on in the patent world during the past year or so. With the assistance of the search engine at the Lens.Org website, I performed a cursory search for all patent publications with the words COVID and VACCINE. I found a total of 304 patent publications.

The 304 publications include 43 granted patents – all of which are US patents, owned by 12 different organizations.

Looking at the entirety of all 304 publications, the jurisdictional breakdown is US (111), WO (109), China (42), and Australia (23), while the UK, Russia, EP, Denmark and Korea combine for a further 19. And none of the patents or applications have as their registered owner any of the major vaccine producers mentioned above.

For a patent holder to prevent unauthorized use of their vaccine in any specific country, they must have a registered patent in that country.

So think about this: none of the vaccine manufacturers currently have any registered patents, anywhere in the world. Organizations that do have patents have them only in the US, and organizations that have patent applications in other countries aren’t among the manufacturers.

There is therefore not a single patent related reason that is stopping distribution of the major Covid vaccines to any country on this planet.

So if this patent waiver campaign isn’t being promoted by the Boy who cried Wolf at the head of a pack of anti-patent Luddites, then we haven’t just suffered from one of the worst global pandemics in modern history!