Gene patenting is essential to innovation – industry won’t invest in vaccines without it

The current state of the U.S. patent regime regarding patenting biomedical data and genomic processes and the announcement from the Biden Administration to waive patent protection for COVID-19 vaccines is a problem according to many in the pharmaceutical industry and other patent advocates. 66 It is especially harmful with the current global pandemic.67 First, genomic and biomedical data patents encourage innovation and provide inventive protection to researchers and inventors who seek to introduce new methods of identifying and curing viral infections.68 The pharmaceutical industry needs to be motivated by making profits when they make huge investments upfront and it can take many years to continue creating effective vaccines that combat the COVID-19 virus and its variants.69 The pharmaceutical industry needs to have sufficient guidance and a more substantial grasp on what is considered patent-eligible and broaden the scope of medical patents in times of increased technology and biomedical innovation and experimentation. 70 Such changes are essential to encouraging these companies to realize some gain that incentivizes the continuation of such innovation for researching the COVID-19 vaccines and other viruses for future pandemics.71 The policy decision to waive patent protections on the COVID-19 vaccines raises fear of a dangerous, unwanted precedent.72 There is difficulty in providing incentives for the future because patent protections were created to incentivize via short-term monopoly profits so that firms and individuals can invest in innovation.73 In the face of a public emergency, this temporary waiver sets a scary precedent that makes firms and individuals doubt whether they will want to invest next time there's an emergency. 74