President Biden just made a brilliant move
President Joe Biden announced on Wednesday that he supports the World Trade Organization’s position that COVID vaccine patents should be waived, due to the worsening nature of the pandemic in nations that don’t have vaccines available. If I’m reading Biden’s move correctly, this is nothing short of brilliant.
U.S. vaccine makers have been wanting to avoid licensing their patents to international pharmaceutical companies, because while the licensing would still be profitable, it wouldn’t be as profitable as manufacturing and selling the drugs directly to foreign governments. But now Biden is threatening to take away their international profits entirely, by allowing international drug makers to start cloning the U.S. vaccines without any licensing.
This should force Pfizer and Moderna to immediately enter into equitable licensing agreements with the overseas drug makers, so they can lock in some profits. The more reputable overseas drug makers will likely be willing to enter into these licensing agreements, agreeing to pay something to Pfizer and Moderna, in order to have the cooperation of those companies while attempting to clone their vaccines.
And while the patent thief governments around the world will never enter into a licensing agreement, they were never going to pay for U.S. vaccines anyway. They rip off everything, so they’re going to rip off the U.S. vaccines whether they’re legally allowed to or not.
So if I’m reading President Biden’s play correctly, and if it works out like it should, then this isn’t going to end up being some kind of doomsday outcome for U.S. pharmaceutical companies for the sake of the common good. Instead these companies are still going to cash in worldwide. They’ll just have to do it in a way that doesn’t let scores of millions of people die in the process.
