Costa Rica asks WHO to create voluntary COVID-19 IP pool
The Costa Rican government has asked the World Health Organization (WHO) to create a voluntary pool to collect patent rights for technologies that are useful for the detection, prevention, control and treatment of the COVID-19 pandemic.
In a letter sent to WHO director-general Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus on Monday, March 23, Costa Rican President Carlos Alvarado Quesada and health minister Daniel Salas Peraza asked WHO to develop the pool.
“Given the urgency of this matter, Costa Rica proposes that the WHO develop an initial concise memorandum of understanding (MoU) on the intent to share rights in technologies funded by the public sector and other relevant actors, and reach out to WHO member states, non-profit institutions, industry and others, to sign such an MoU,” said the letter.
According to Costa Rica, the pool should include existing and future rights in patented inventions and designs, and rights in regulatory test data, know-how, cell lines, copyrights and blueprints for manufacturing diagnostic tests, devices, drugs, or vaccines.
The pool should provide for free access or licensing on “reasonable and affordable terms”, in every member country, added the letter.
The Costa Rican officials also asked WHO to create a database of research and development activity related to COVID-19, including estimates of the costs of clinical trials, and the subsidies provided by governments and charities.
Compulsory licensing
Other governments are considering different ways to ramp up their fight against the pandemic.
The Chilean Chamber of Deputies (the lower house of Chile's bicameral Congress) approved a resolution asking the Chilean government to declare that there is justification for compulsory licences.
In Ecuador, a committee in the National Assembly approved a resolution asking the Minister of Health to issue licences that would allow the government to sidestep patents related to Covid-19 medical technologies.
Meanwhile, Israel has approved generic versions of an HIV antiviral owned by AbbVie for use in treating coronavirus, despite the company still holding patent protection.