Will the COVID Vaccine Companies Fall off the Patent Cliff?
On May 5 the Biden administration announced that the government would support the removal of patent protections for COVID-19 vaccines at the World Trade Organization. "The Administration believes strongly in intellectual property protections, but in service of ending this pandemic, supports the waiver of those protections for COVID-19 vaccines," U.S. Trade Ambassador Katherine Tai said in a statement. "We will actively participate in text-based negotiations at the World Trade Organization (WTO) needed to make that happen."
Negotiations at the WTO can take months, or even years, because all 164 countries have to agree on the language that is used. So it's perhaps unlikely that the WTO will abolish the patent protections. But it could be bad news for vaccine companies like Moderna (NASDAQ: MRNA) and Novavax (NASDAQ: NVAX).
In this Motley Fool Live video, recorded on May 14, Corinne Cardina, bureau chief of healthcare and cannabis at Fool.com, and Fool.com contributor Taylor Carmichael discuss the "patent cliff" that sometimes hurts pharmaceutical stocks.
Source Fool.com