After Covid-19 vaccines, it is now the intellectual property rights of Covid-19 diagnostic tools and treatments that are the subject of disagreements at the World Trade Organization (WTO). When WTO members agreed to relax patent rules for vaccines in June 2022, they gave themselves six months to decide whether to extend these flexibilities to treatments and diagnostic tools (see EUROPE 12974/2).
More than three months later, discussions have stalled and are following the same course as before (see EUROPE 12990/18). Countries that advocate the complete removal of patents are at odds with those that see no need for this.
At a meeting on 3 October in Geneva, the so-called developed countries (including Switzerland, the UK, the EU and Japan) again requested evidence and factual analysis of intellectual property barriers to access to Covid-19 diagnostics and treatment, according to a Geneva source.
South Africa, India, Indonesia and Egypt, among others, stressed the need to extend flexibilities to enable developing countries to produce diagnostic tools and treatments.
In order to speed up the discussions before the 17 December deadline, additional meetings were scheduled for the negotiators in November. (Original version in French by Léa Marchal)