 Hello and welcome to NewsClick. Today, we're going to be talking about patents in the time of the pandemic on how the intellectual property regime is affecting the fight against COVID-19. We have Prabir Purukayasar with us. So Prabir, there are three aspects that we'll discuss today. One being the medicines that are currently being used to treat patients. Then there's a question of masks and other equipment. And finally, the most important question that perhaps that's of vaccines. So to start with, what are the key medicines that are what you call options right now? And how does the patent regime basically affect the user? Then what are the options governments have? You see, if we look at what would be called the most advanced ones which are being used. And these are repurposed medicines. That means these medicines already existed for other diseases are now being thought of may have value also against the COVID-19 disease itself. Now this among these, apart from hydrochloroquine, all of these which are going under trials seem to be patented medicine, which means they're under patent protection. If it's patent protected, that means the generic version is really not available. Because it's still under patent and patents are protected under different regimes, different countries. But the TRIPS agreement has forced everybody to give patents and what are called product patents. So given that these medicines are not available, only hydrochloroquine, these are probably the only medicines which are being talked of as well as azithromycin. These are the two medicines if you remember were used in the French trials, that these are not under at the moment patent protection, generic versions are available. If we look at the one drug which seems to be perhaps the most doubted at the moment is Gilead Sciences Remdesivir, which was originally developed against Ebola, did not work. Now people are saying that it seems to be also useful and it could be very useful against COVID-19. It's under the Solidarity WHO trials. The interesting part is all those who have been very critical of the French trial because it didn't use double-blind trials, etc., etc., it used it in essentially serious patients. They don't seem to have the same criticism of the Gilead Science trials currently which of course are also being conducted under very similar conditions, not the WHO trials but the trials which have been reported. And I don't see similar kinds of criticism coming out of that. And Gilead Sciences talk has actually risen because WHO has also said that this drug seems to be effective against the virus. Now how and why these are effective against the viruses? I'll leave that out completely because we don't really know much about that. Till widespread trials are conducted, we really will not be able to figure out what the pathways are, how it works and to the extent it does. But all of these, the other ones which are there are the antivirals. All the antivirals, most of them are essentially complex molecules. They are protected today under patents as well. And even the WHO trials, all of them are antiretroviles. They are using the Solidarity trials. All of them again have essentially patented medicines. The Rittenbar, Lopinbar combination. We also are talking about adding certain other things in it which are anti-flu kind of stuff. So interferon alpha. So I think interferon beta is being used in the trials. So all of these actually are also under patent protection. So what is it that we can do on these issues? Well, we have one instrument which still remains. Even after trials, which is what's called compulsory licensing. Under compulsory licensing, if particularly there is a pandemic, you can actually license, force the license, give it to other companies and say manufacture and the government can decide what is the amount of license fees that could be given to the original patent holder. So this is I think the immediate course of action to take. Let's also be clear, our kitty against viruses have not been that useful because most of the times they're expensive biologic drugs. They're complex molecules and they have... Currently, not many of such drugs exist even against other viruses. Even if you take anti-AIDS drugs, as you can see, it doesn't clear the body of the AIDS disease but it continues that you have to take it for your life. So those are the kind of things we still have with the virus. So what you do with this medicine is allow the body to build up antibodies which can fight and defeat the virus. So that is the medical issue at the moment. So I think, yes, this could lead to, again, fleecing the global population, making money out of the disease as the economy sinks that Gilead stock should rise itself tells you what are the issues involved. Will the poor of the world get the medicines? Yes. If the governments come together, yes. You can compulsorily license these drugs and that's a demand that should be raised globally. If whatever drugs are useful against COVID-19, compulsorily license them but do not make it given under patent protection and this is something that I think the global community has to raise as an issue. And similar is the issue with masks and other equipments especially the N95 masks. So we have seen instances of shipments that were meant for various countries being diverted to the United States. Even the US has not even spared its so-called allies but behind that we have a larger problem of one company having this domination over masks and other kinds of equipment also. So what is the scenario in that field? Well, on equipment there is a whole class of issues involved. You can start with masks, you have ventilators, you have testing kits, you have equipment for testing, all of that should also be taken into account. Now the masks of course have become the most important because N95 masks, particularly the ones which are the most critical for the hospital system where the doctors and nurses and the other hospital staff require N95 masks. N95 masks essentially means the number of viruses that can pass through are very few. So that when you breathe in, you are not breathing the virus of the people that you are treating. So the 3M company seems to be owning the largest production centers of the masks. They have centers in China, they have centers in different parts of the world. So all of them come under the US jurisdiction because 3M as a company is a US company. So the US government has said, I don't care where you manufacture the masks, you have to give me first before you give it even to the country you manufacture it in and this is a sovereignty issue. Who has sovereignty over a company which is say in China or in Canada? Is it the US? Is it the US? Because 3M is an American company, US company or is it that basically those jurisdictions can exercise control over 3M because the company is producing those masks over there. So this has been the hijacking issue, stealing issue, robbery issue or coercive instruments which the US has again used even against Canada. So leaving that out for the time being, the interesting part is 3M has 400 patents on the N95 masks and therefore it's not simply a question of who's producing the masks, but if anybody else produces them, can 3M sue them? Probably at this time no, because the global pushback might be very, very severe and generally patents of this kind are useful to delay production, to delay companies from getting into this market but the really long-term building equipment around patents is quite reasonably easy. So it's a legal battle that you have to fight and it delays you. Now as you know, delay at the moment is of course going to be very, very expensive. The second set of issues are basically ventilators and so on and I don't think that companies today are going to stand on patents and try and deny others from doing it. But when it comes to testing, there are reagents, there are testing kits, certain components of the testing kits where patent suits are possible. There was a company which wanted to file a patent suit against another one, but they have backed off after getting a huge amount of flag. So those issues are still there because testing kits are a bit of a gray area. Testing principles are not patentable. Even the US court has said that because after all, use a genome sequence, then you match the genome sequence. All this is widely known and the genome sequence is not a secret. In fact, it has been put into public database by China as early as 12th January. So it cannot be claimed to be a private property. Given that it does seem the testing kits probably will not see too much of intellectual property issues. It will still be regulatory barriers. How you regulate them? Who passes them? What stamp you require for it to be used widely? Even ICMR wants 100% proof or it wants the American standard, the US FDA stamp or the European Union stamp on a test kit. So leaving those things out, it's not so much of an intellectual property issue at the moment, but there are moves to put it in the intellectual property as well. And finally the question of vaccines which is probably the only at the end what will actually take us through. So right now we are still in the very early stages of trials, of development and there are a lot of options being explored around the world. But once we reach a stage where there are say three or four credible possibilities, what is the kind of patent wars that are likely to or intellectual property wars that are likely to go around vaccines? You see vaccines are an interesting issue for a different per reason. The genome sequence is fundamental to the vaccine. You also have to take all the mutations of the disease into account, so your vaccine has to work against all of them. Now here is the issue that while the genome sequence has to be put in public domain, as I said China put it in public domain as early as January 12th, without which even the testing could not have been available. The interesting part of it is the vaccine that comes out of knowing the genome of course needs investment by companies, but at the end of it the information which is vital for the vaccine is public domain information which then becomes a private property via the vaccine of the company which develops the vaccine. So this is the fundamental conflict or contention at the center of the vaccine issue because this did not come up with COVID-19. It came really with the flu vaccine because as you know flu the virus changes every year you have different variants of it, so you have to build all of that into the vaccine itself. So if the virus comes the companies which have or produce the vaccine they want the flu genome the flu virus genome to be put on a public database there is a public database for it now on which all the viruses are put by countries seeing the disease. Then the vaccine when it is developed it costs $20, $25, $15 a shot. Now that is way above the range of countries which are poor countries where the population is largely poor who cannot afford personally $20 for a flu shot neither can the countries to bulk flu shots particularly 1.3 billion of the Indian people multiplied by $20 is a huge cost. So they have been asking if we put flu virus into your database, into a global database then you also to make it available to those countries at a certain cost. Now that's a commercial issue being negotiated and there are biodiversity treaty references and all of that but I would come to this other side how are these vaccines produced? Here produced actually largely through grants given by private trusts which are charitable trusts or by governments in this particular case US is going to spend $1 billion helping a development of a vaccine it's been given to a private company. Now US position is after that it belongs to the private company. Now that's where the problem starts. So the Chinese via the Genome sequence was the first to be used all the work has been basically done on that at the end of it it will get privatized if this continues. Of course China also has a vaccine program out of the six or seven which are right now in early clinical trials not even clinical trials but early trials means you test it first is it working, is there antibodies being produced then you test to see whether what should be the dosage should it be repeated how long will the antibodies take to build up all of those issues are there. So then only it gets into large scale human trials at which stage maybe the frontline health workers will be vaccinated. Now if you really do all of this you will require something like 300 million to 1 billion vaccines if it gives you a longevity for say a year at least 1 billion is what you will have to vaccinate in the world assuming a lot of people already they would have also antibodies. So that's a huge amount of money that we are talking about. Now these six companies which are now in early trials they would probably not all of them succeed. So whoever becomes a front runner is going to get the bonanza. Now that is it going to be privatized? Is the public health system then can it say this has been built with public money it must be available to people publicly well is there a mechanism for doing this is WHO the mechanism through which this can be negotiated it could also explain why the US is now moving against WHO because these are the things that WHO has done in the past and therefore knocking them out would also mean if the US is the early front runner in the vaccine race and now it's the largest number of patients so its ability to test is really there. Now if that happens then is the rest of the world then going to be dependent on a couple of American companies of course we have a German private company also in the race as I said we have also a Chinese company so we have to see at the end of it the question is a much more fundamental one who decides whether patent protection should be given to such medicine or should it be left to the world that when public health becomes the paramount issue it trumps private property and that I think is the issue this COVID-19 pandemic is also putting before us. Thank you so much Pravee for talking to us.