WTO members once again tried, at a meeting on 30 April, to reconcile their positions on the issue of patent waivers for Covid-19 vaccines.
The Chair of the World Trade Organization’s (WTO) Council on Trade-Related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights (TRIPS), Dagfinn Sørli (Norway), said there was “room for cautious optimism” after the latest exchanges on 30 April.
While WTO members are still divided into two camps on the intellectual property rights of vaccines, they have agreed to continue discussions.
Those supporting the patent waiver have announced that they will submit a revised text of their original October 2020 proposal. Consultations are reportedly underway between the different camps to try to adjust the proposal and move the discussions forward. The initiators of the text asked the Chair to consider holding a meeting with all members in the second half of May, with a view to analysing the revised proposal at the TRIPS Council meeting in early June.
Several delegations asked the WTO Secretariat to provide data on existing and future voluntary licences and their impact on vaccine production. These are cases where patent holders voluntarily grant a licence to use their technology.
The EU is among those members that consider that existing tools, such as voluntary or compulsory licences, already provide the necessary flexibility to overcome intellectual property barriers and increase vaccine production capacity (see EUROPE 12704/5). (Original version in French by Léa Marchal)