Thread by @CoppetainPU

This is an interesting WTO staff working paper by Ting-Wei (Alex) Chiang and Xiaoping Wu of the Intellectual Property Division

It's complicated, but that's the nature of #COVID19 vaccines and vaccine patents

Direct link to the paper: wto.org/english/res_e/…

Some takeaways

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https://twitter.com/wto/status/1491802803131465732

The paper looks at the different types of vaccine technology and their "patent families" (patent applications for the same or similar technical content), evolution, distribution of inventions and patents globally, types of companies involved, and more

2/6 wto.org/english/res_e/…

• Vaccine types vary in the number of patent families involved. Viral vector (AstraZeneca etc) and mRNA (Pfizer, Moderna, etc) have more

• Private firms dominate, SMEs contributing most, public labs do basic science research

• Earlier years count

3/6 wto.org/english/res_e/…

• First patents tend to be in the US and EU. Subsequent patent filings in other countries, mostly top innovating economies.

• The legal status of the studied patents varies internationally. The status in most developing countries is not known

4/6 wto.org/english/res_e/…

There is no "international patent" or no single patent for any single vaccine: they have multiple patent families.

Understanding this is necessary for intellectual property policies and how it might block production.

5/6 wto.org/english/res_e/…

The data on patents is from the @MedsPatentPool VaxPal database medicinespatentpool.org/what-we-do/vax…

Here's one of the many colourful graphics in the paper

6/6 wto.org/english/res_e/…