Intellectual Property and Education in the Age of COVID-19
QUT Faculty of Law
Wednesday, 29 July 2020
10:00am to 3:00pm
Z1064, Gibson Room, Level 10, Z Block
QUT Gardens Point Campus
The People’s Vaccine: Intellectual Property, Access to Medicines, and the Coronavirus COVID-19
Professor Matthew Rimmer
Abstract
This presentation provides an overview of intellectual property and access to medicines in the age of COVID-19. There have also been worries that superpowers such as the United States, Russia and China will engage in vaccine nationalism – rather than participate in co-operative multilateralism. The Trump administration has taken an America First position - and has sought to develop Operation Warpspeed to encourage the development of a vaccine for its local population. Likewise, there has been concerns about pharmaceutical drug companies, biotechnology developers, and the medical diagnostics industry engaging in profiteering in respect of COVID-19 technologies. Winnie Byanyima from UNAIDS and former New Zealand Prime Minister Helen Clark have argued that there is a need for a People’s Vaccine – rather than a patent monopoly held by a pharmaceutical drug company. The World Health Organization has established the ACT Accelerator in order to boost research, development, and deployment of COVID-19 technologies - including vaccines, diagnostics, and treatments. Costa Rica proposed a Coronavirus Technology Access Pool - which has been taken up by the World Health Organization. The Medicines Patent Pool has expanded its jurisdiction to include the sharing of intellectual property related to the coronavirus. Stanford University has helped establish a framework for public licensing in respect of COVID-19 technologies. Universities Allied for Essential Medicines has called upon public institutions to 'free the vaccine'. A number of companies and institutions have taken the Open COVID 19 pledge not to bring intellectual property action against researchers working on the coronavirus. The defence of experimental use under patent law will be important - as will the right to repair under designs law. A range of national governments have also indicated that they will deploy compulsory licensing and crown use provisions if access to COVID-19 technologies are blocked, or companies engage in profiteering. There has also been a larger discussion about the need for open science to encourage a collective approach to tackling the public health pandemic of the coronavirus.
Biography
Dr Matthew Rimmer is a Professor in Intellectual Property and Innovation Law at the Faculty of Law, at the Queensland University of Technology (QUT). He has published widely on copyright law and information technology, patent law and biotechnology, access to medicines, plain packaging of tobacco products, intellectual property and climate change, Indigenous Intellectual Property, and intellectual property and trade. He is undertaking research on intellectual property and 3D printing; the regulation of robotics and artificial intelligence; and intellectual property and public health (particularly looking at the coronavirus COVID-19). His work is archived at QUT ePrints, SSRN Abstracts, Bepress Selected Works, and Open Science Framework.
