The success of an international waiver of patent protections on Covid-19 vaccines largely hangs on whether the U.S. forces its companies to share manufacturing specifications and may not be the harbinger of global immunization it’s cracked up to be, critics say.
Patent industry participants were caught off guard by U.S. Trade Representative Katherine Tai’s announcement Wednesday that the Biden administration supports waiving international intellectual property protections on Covid-19 vaccines. Stocks for vaccine producers Pfizer, BioNtech, Moderna, and Johnson & Johnson dropped after news of the administration’s position came out.
The proposal is now before the World Trade Organization for consideration ...