WIPO Vaccines Report Contestable, With UN High-Level Panel Misquoted, Advocate Says

The World Intellectual Property Organization this week held an event that delved into research, markets and access for vaccines with panels that showed unusual breadth of representation for the UN IP agency. But health advocates have taken issue with the wording of a report released by WIPO at the event.

An Intellectual Property Watch story on the event is available here (IPW, WIPO, 9 November 2017).

WIPO launched a new report on accelerating innovation and access for vaccines. The WIPO report is entitled, Global Challenges Report [pdf] on Vaccines: Accelerating Innovation and Access.

The report describes the innovation process for vaccines. It addresses topics such as the value of vaccines, vaccines research and development (R&D), including push and pull mechanisms, the regulatory pathway, and intellectual property rights.

But a column published by InfoJustice.org, written by researcher Yuan Qiong Hu, is contesting the finding of the WIPO report, which according to her “concluded with several contestable remarks and downplayed the role of patent in hindering vaccine competition.”

The report, she said, “holds the view that the ‘various forms of IP rights have not posed a significant barrier to the manufacture and distribution of vaccines.” Hu cites a recent report published by MSF “A Fair Shot for Vaccine Affordability [pdf],” which suggest that new generation of vaccines are prone to high concentration of patent evergreening.

Hu, who was attending the WIPO event, remarked at that time that the United Nations High Level Panel on Access to Medicines was mentioned in the WIPO report, but not in a satisfying way.

The report in concluding the discussion on compulsory licence, cites the HLP saying “the use of compulsory licenses could dissuade manufacturers from investing in and developing health technologies that address pressing global health needs.” However, the HLP report [pdf] states that “government should adopt and implement legislation that facilitates the issuance of compulsory licenses.” It also says that “such legislation must be designed to effectuate quick, fair, predicable and implementable compulsory licenses for legitimate public health needs…”

“Using citation in this manner has distorted the actual recommendation by the UNHLP report concerning compulsory license. It is misleading,” she said in her post.

“WIPO needs to retreat this report to give a more professional analysis on the concrete patent barriers facing the new vaccine market, and the legal and policy tools that countries could use in tackling evergreening practices,” she added.