US declares support for patent waiver on Covid-19 vaccines

My cynical take after having worked close to the industry:

- this was not done without some level of agreement from the companies affected

- other companies can use the IP, if they can make it work (major challenge with the mRNA vaccines)

- for the mRNA vaccines this will have little to no impact; other companies can use the IP but it will take a year or more before they can start producing vaccines, and by then we’ll be onto v2.0

- the IP holders will enter into licensing agreements before any IP is broken (in exchange for technical help). Companies won’t miss out on much revenue since these werent priority markets anyways

Basically the manufacturers will keep the wealthy western markets to themselves where all the profit is while gaining PR by opening up more access for developing countries

Or put another way, the Biden administration supports the theft of intellectual property belonging to some of the most innovative companies of the millennium, harming their financial futures (https://mobile.twitter.com/CNBCnow/status/139002374219406131...), and discouraging future biotech innovation in America. Oh and also no one will be able to make these vaccines at scale before Pfizer and Moderna have doses available for the entire global population anyways. The profit incentive matters, greatly, and Biden should have asked those other countries to make purchases from these vaccine manufacturers and asked them to source ingredients to help them speed up, instead of robbing them of their core assets.