Ian Welsh

The horizon is not so far as we can see, but as far as we can imagine

Tag: Intellectual “Property”

Offshoring Critical Industries Is So Harmful It Should Be Treason (Covid Edition)

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On March 25, 2021

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I was impressed how fast the UK and the US were vaccinating their population. How were they doing it, after they had been so incompetent during the rest of the pandemic?

Simple enough. Restrictions on vaccine exports.

Meanwhile:

India delays big exports of AstraZeneca shot, including to COVAX, as infections surge

And then there’s this:

(Spare me the self-serving arguments that breaking the patents wouldn’t have helped because it takes too much time to ramp up production. However long it takes, the sooner  your open up the IP, the faster it happens.)

And we could make it happen faster:

But the global capacity for producing vaccines is about a third of what is needed, says Ellen t’Hoen, an expert in medicines policy and intellectual property law.

….

To make a vaccine you not only need to have the right to produce the actual substance they are composed of (which is protected by patents), you also need to have the knowledge about how to make them because the technology can be complex.

The WHO does not have the authority to sidestep patents – but it is trying to bring countries together to find a way to bolster vaccine supplies.

The discussions include using provisions in international law to get around patents and helping countries to have the technical ability to make them.

Rich countries use IP law to keep poor countries poor, and to kill and impoverish their citizens to make even larger profits.

And, of course, if you’re stupid enough to believe neoliberal bullshit about how your countries will be OK and don’t take steps even though you have manufacturing capacity, (Europe), well, your citizens die. The EU is now restricting imports to the UK. I wonder how many Europeans will die because of not having those 10 million doses?

“I mention specifically the U.K.,” said EU Commission Vice-President Valdis Dombrovskis. Since the end of January, “some 10 million doses have been exported from the EU to the U.K. and zero doses have been exported from U.K. to the EU.”

OK. I have said this for years and years but I’m going to say it again now that it is being illustrated brutally: if you can’t make it yourself, you can’t be sure you’ll have it when you need it, since countries that can make it will tend to prioritize themselves.

You must make and grow everything essential to your country domestically if you can. Any international laws that forbid you from doing so are illegitimate. They may exist; they are not Just. This doesn’t mean completely breaking patent law (though it needs to be much less draconian and a lot less long), it does mean, at the least, writing in mandatory licensing provisions at reasonable prices.

A lot of people are going to die who didn’t need to because neoliberal “free trade” orthodoxy said you didn’t need to be able to both design and make vaccines in your own country: the “market” would supply you.

Eventually.

This isn’t just about behaviour now. It is about behaviour that has been encoded into law and trade practice over decades.

Don’t offshore anything that matters. If your citizens have to pay 5% or 10% more, slap on tariffs.

To not do so, if you think the welfare of your citizens is your duty, is treason.

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The Weirdness of “Coronavirus” Hacking

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On July 22, 2020

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We now have two cases of the US claiming that hackers have gone after US Coronavirus vaccine data — first the Russians, then the Chinese.

The Chinese hacking claim is packaged up with a slew of other allegations, mostly about hacking “intellectual property,” which is to say ideas. The US has spent much of the last 50 years making IP laws last longer and more strenuous. Ideas, which is what IP laws cover, are not diminished if more than one person uses them. They aren’t like lawnmowers. I can’t use my lawnmower while you are using it, but I can use my idea of the printing press while you are using my idea of the printing press.

When the United States was the rising power, it routinely violated IP law, primarily British and German IP law. Now that it is the falling power, it seeks to extract as much as it can from its IP.

Perhaps the problem is that IP law isn’t old enough? If the Chinese could charge everyone using gunpowder and printing presses, a lot of nonsense might get sorted out quickly.

But fundamentally, this is a matter of power: An old power wanting to extract fees and rent from a new power. There is no great moral argument here, because, no, it isn’t about artists and authors or inventors, this is about big companies and big countries and the way IP law is set up clearly strangles innovation rather than encouraging it.

The idea of Covid-19 vaccine hacking is particularly ludicrous and insane. Any vaccine for an epidemic must belong to all of humanity. There is no public interest case of any significance in silo-ing vaccine data. Perhaps some US companies want to “win” the vaccine race and then charge as much as possible for a vaccine.

That’s monstrous and stupid on public welfare terms. Vaccines need to be had by virtually everyone, and thus need to be cheap and easily available.

Every country’s hackers should hack all vaccine info if the idea is that some country or company can own vaccine info and profit from it.

The larger truth is simple: The US has draconian IP laws which it has used its muscle to force other countries to take on, generally against their interests. Some of those countries do hack IP. This is to be expected. Making a huge deal out of it is a move in great power politics, where important forces in the US (with the UK now joining) want to divide the world into two power blocs and have a new cold war.

But even if in a 1950s style cold war of “Freedom” vs. “Equality,” there is no argument from principle for not sharing a vaccine or vaccine data.

Imagine the horror of everyone being vaccinated.

What a tragedy.

It’s all very silly, as we know that the people who will pay the most for any vaccine, if any country chooses to gouge, will be Americans.

Americans don’t need to worry about China or Russia. They need to worry about their own politicians and corporate leaders.

Those are the people primarily responsible for killing and impoverishing Americans.

Anyone who thinks otherwise is either part of the killing for money, or a fool.

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