Strong intellectual property laws are necessary for pharma innovation. Weakening IP collapses investment.

Innovation can—and does—happen anywhere and at any time. As society ground to a halt in 2020, innovators around the world worked tirelessly to develop treatments, vaccines, and solutions to COVID-19 pandemic-related challenges. From personal protective equipment (PPE) to treatments and vaccines to autonomous delivery robots to remote and social distancing solutions for the workplace, intellectual property (IP) played an indispensable role in enabling research, development, and commercialization of many of the innovations meeting the challenges of the pandemic. IP enables start-ups to gain access to much-needed capital. IP gives innovators the confidence to invest in research and development (R&D) and provides incentives for commercialization. Indeed, it is difficult to innovate without the protection of ideas.

Despite this, some—particularly anti-business IP opponents—have blamed IP rights for a host of problems, including limited access to therapeutics, vaccines, and biotechnology. They offer seemingly simple solutions—weaken or eliminate IP rights—and innovation will flow like manna from heaven. Eliminating IP rights might accelerate the diffusion of some pre-existing innovations, but it would absolutely limit future innovations. Innovators, a bit like Charlie Brown kicking the football held by Lucy, would be wary of trusting governments who might say, “Well, this time we won’t take away your IP rights, so go ahead and invest large amounts of time and money.” Given the nature of COVID-19, nations around the world cannot afford to take this risk. Future pandemics and other challenges for which we will need to rely on IP-protected innovations to overcome are near certain to arise.