Harshwita Inuganti, Banoth Mythily Meera Naik & Vijaya Bharathi Roy, Symbiosis Law School, Hyderabad
ABSTRACT
The concept of granting compulsory licenses, especially in the pharmaceutical sector, is of the utmost importance at the time, to people all around the world due to the Covid 19 pandemic and is debated widely. Compulsory licensing, is a concept which has a rich history and has been observed in the year 1623 and has evolved a lot over the past four hundred years. It has been adopted in the Paris convention and made mandatory for the WTO members through the TRIPS agreement.
Though compulsory licensing is considered detrimental to the spirit of patents it has proved itself to be a necessary evil as it has its own advantages and disadvantages which affect countries in various aspects such as economic and political aspects. Compulsory licensing has played a huge role in tackling the pandemic. Many countries such as Israel, Canada, Chile and Ecuador have taken precautionary measures by amending their laws to make compulsory licensing of Covid 19 related technologies more effective in preparation for the benefit of the country’s population.
Albeit being a well-established international organization, WIPO wasn’t an exception when being subjected to Covid 19’s impact. WIPO handled both patents and pandemics by introducing its own arbitration council and conducting various meetings on licensing vaccines and other medicines that were available online to the whole world. Since its establishment, WIPO proved to be a global influencer. This research paper highlights the details of above- mentioned facts and also focuses on the issuance of compulsory licensing in previous instances.
Keywords: Compulsory licensing, WIPO, TRIPS Agreement, Covid 19, Intellectual Property Rights
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