By Chloe Reichel
High-profile commentators have argued recently that vaccine scarcity needn’t exist. If vaccine manufacturers simply shared their patents with other pharmaceutical companies, supply would quickly ramp up.
The vaccine shortage doesn’t need to exist. Pfizer and Moderna could share their design with the dozens of other pharma companies who stand ready to produce their vaccines and end the pandemic.
— James Hamblin (@jameshamblin) February 2, 2021
Others have pointed out that numerous bottlenecks exist in the manufacturing process, from the glass vials that hold the vaccine, to the lipids that encase the vaccine’s active ingredient, mRNA.
And even if these bottlenecks didn’t exist, the intellectual property argument may be a straw man.
Folks. I know this sounds simple and easy which is why it has 1000 likes. But it is not that simple. Moderna has open licensed, albeit imperfectly https://t.co/PUdpGfTbhJ , and it’s still not simple. See, eg, https://t.co/OEX2qCBd9J.
— Govind Persad (@GovindPersad) February 2, 2021
In fact, this past October, Moderna made a gesture toward opening access to its intellectual property, by pledging that it would not enforce its patents against “those making vaccines intended to combat the pandemic.” That month, Jorge L. Contreras, a Presidential Scholar and Professor of Law at the University of Utah, covered the patent pledge and its potential implications for Bill of Health.
We checked in with Contreras to ask about the implications of Moderna’s patent pledge now that its vaccine has been proven safe and effective. Here are the highlights from the conversation: