Patents made COVID vaccines possible – zero evidence supports hindering cooperation

The invention, development, testing, and rollout of vaccines in response to the COVID-19 pandemic was the fastest in global history. The delivery of vaccine doses to patients in the developing world has lagged behind the developed world, but this was not caused by patents or other IP rights. There is no evidence that patents have blocked the research, development, or distribution of any vaccines for the treatment of COVID-19. The evidence is to the contrary: patents prompted the investment of billions of dollars over several decades in research and development efforts, as well as in creating a manufacturing and commercial infrastructure in the biopharmaceutical sector, that made possible the COVID-19 vaccines.

These investments were made possible given the reliable and effective patents rights secured in biotech innovations in the U.S. since the early 1980s.8 The result was the biotech revolution, driven by an explosion in biotech startups from Genentech in the early 1980s to Moderna today. The U.S. accounts for approximately 5% of the world’s total population and roughly 25% of global economic output, but over 50% of all new biotech innovations are created in the U.S.9

This technological and commercial foundation was key to the biopharmaceutical sector’s response to COVID-19. There was some work by government scientists on the basic research, but it was patent-based venture capital investments and licensing that were the foundation of new biotech companies, like BioNTech and Moderna, that developed the mRNA platform to create the first COVID-19 vaccines in early 2020. Two decades earlier, many in the scientific community believed mRNA-based vaccines were an impossible pipedream.6 After Chinese researchers published the genome of SARS-CoV2 on January 11, 2020, Moderna created its vaccine using its mRNA technology in 2 days.10 BioNTech was even faster: researchers created its COVID-19 vaccine in several hours.11