Preserving Innovation: World IP Day Shines a Light on Recent Wins for Consumers

With World Intellectual Property (IP) Day here, it is important to recognize recent wins for IP and its role in maintaining and expanding research and development (R&D) efforts here at home and abroad. Each year, this day stands as an opportunity to reflect on the advances IP protections have made possible for consumers everywhere. Preserving these protections is vital to support the brighter future innovators around the world are working to build. The recent World Trade Organization (WTO) decision on the Trade-Related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights (TRIPS) Waiver did just that. The original TRIPS Waiver, which stripped patent rights on COVID-19 vaccines, was a crime of opportunity — using the pandemic as an excuse to undermine IP protections and allow foreign competitors to make their claims on U.S. IP. Earlier this year, the WTO decided not to expand this policy to include COVID-19 therapeutics and diagnostics. The WTO’s decision prevents this shameful policy from snowballing, which would have left a trail of destruction in its wake. This win was extremely important for the future of innovation and marks something that is worth celebrating during this year’s World IP Day. Strong IP protections incentivize the private sector to continue to invest in new innovative cures and treatments that benefit countless consumers. This is especially important in medicine, where it takes an average of 15 years and $3 billion to bring a new drug to market. Expanding the TRIPS Waiver to therapeutics would have scared off future private investment in this space. Why risk valuable time and resources when IP rights can simply be waived? This approach would also have emboldened rival countries, such as China, to continue indiscriminately stealing our technology, for which we have invested significant sums of money. China is already stealing American IP to gain an unfair economic advantage. Currently, the theft of IP by the Chinese Communist Party costs America’s economy up to $600 billion a year. By just handing out our technology, the United States would lose its position as a global leader in innovation. While some might argue that giving away patents would open up access to lifesaving drugs for the international community, this could not be further from the truth. In reality, IP protections helped companies invest in and scale up their infrastructure to meet global demand during the pandemic. Patients, Americans, and the international community all benefit from a strong framework of IP protections. This World IP Day, we should shine a light on the positive developments that uphold this framework. The WTO made a potentially lifesaving decision not to expand the TRIPS Waiver — but we can’t stop here. Decisionmakers must continue to work to strengthen and promote IP protections for the sake of consumers, taxpayers, patients, and everyone who has a stake in building a brighter future.