Some thoughts on the viral IP/Gates/OxAZ vaccine tweet, rare for IP-related content to go viral. My main discomfort is w/ the reductive singling out of Gates instead of diagnosing IP as nationalistic trade tool and symptom of global capitalist structure. Sorry long thread https://twitter.com/hyoyoonkang/status/1353474906298716166

These IP/TRIPs structures and problems have existed pre-covid. Public often didn’t care. It seemed niche issue. Technical. What is diff. now? The speed & scale of manufacture are under more pressure bec it is a global pandemic and affecting almost all adults.

But AIDS was a comparable, if not worse, epidemic on such a scale.
What’s new now is that the virus doesn't spare rich people. You can’t buy your way out of it. It needs a public solution. But the ‘public’ is elusive. Some details below:

1) I don’t disagree w/ that tweet in critique of the Gates Foundation but don’t like the shrill manner esp. considering conspiracy theories ab Gates at the mo. It doesn’t equally take to task the vaccine-hoarding gvts hosting the IP-owning pharma companies in their jurisdictions

2) Not having patents doesn’t equate to knowledge sharing. You can have patents and pool them for free. Much debate about property form and problem charity. But it can work, e.g. see @MedsPatentPool

3)The term ‘open source’ seems not entirely inaccurate bec of analogy w/ software. You can’t start ‘coding’ medicine at home. Materiality of software and pharma industries are different. But common principle is right: sharing knowledge.

4) tweet makes no mention of building production capability, esp. in countries that depend on medicine imports. That’s why the Trips waiver initiative by India & http://S.Africa  make a lot of sense. But it is not supported by the IP-owning countries, eg US, EU, CH, Canada

5) it’s not just patents that are problematic, but secrecy. There are also other IP issues, such as trade secrets, trade marks, know-how, lack of price transparency for publicly funded medicines. W/out leak, we would not know that S. Africa is paying double price of EU for AZ/OX

6) Re Davos-style governance of global health & the role of Gates Foundation. Yes, private/hybrid actor pushing or preserving IP interests in pandemic times (w/ AZ; COVAX facility channeled through WHO) at the expense of other more pooling initiatives (C-TAP) is super problematic

@pritipatnaik wrote a good report on this kind of ‘stakeholderism’ at the expense of multilateralism. But let’s also think about the complicity of Oxford and universities and gvts in not sharing knowledge in urgent times. What is their role?

7) Public/private distinctions have been blurred for some time: think about the uni/science/business nexus (f. ex. Rockefeller foundation, Max Planck & Fraunhofer institutions, the normalisation of 'scientist entrepreneurs' S. Shapin, Nobel for CRISPR, subjects of patent dispute)

Privatisation of public services: Not a few countries are running on administrative capacities of corporations, eg covid home test via amazon.
8) WHO’s financing means that it is to a large degree donor-dependent, too, such as Gates Foundation.

9) Vaccine nationalism follows from economic nationalism. Whose publics are the IP-owning countries serving? Not their fellow humans but their corporations.

10) IP reflects the broader global capitalist regulation. IP history (eg @kathybowrey) is good in showing that. My ongoing work on capitalisation & financialisation of patents is an attempt to theorise it. IP system needs to be seen in this setting, not just through covid-19 lens

it's not apologia but basically patents do not need to exist in this current form and it would depend on rebuilding the publics and hold gvts accountable