-Newsclick.in It appears the stage is being set to scuttle India and South Africa’s IP waiver proposal with regard to Covid vaccines and technology ahead of the 12th WTO Ministerial this month-end. At various global fora, Big Pharma and rich countries have been steadfastly pushing the focus toward supply-side bottlenecks of vaccines and unequal distribution of doses in a bid to steer the discourse away from the more contentious issue of patents...

-NetworkIdeas.org With its gross debt as of March 31, 2021 placed at Rs. 1.8 lakh crore and losses in the preceding quarter totalling more than Rs. 7,000 crore, Vi (former Vodafone Idea), once India’s largest telecom company in terms of subscriber base, is staring at bankruptcy. In a last-ditch effort to win state support to survive, Kumar Mangalam Birla, the Chairman of Vi, wrote to the government in June, offering to...

-The Indian Express Innovation in vaccine production can have an impact only if it is accessible to all. Patents and access to life-saving drugs has always been an emotive and contentious issue. The right to healthy life is a moral minimum, and to find a rational basis to deny it is deeply offensive to the idea of life itself. At the same time, pharma corporations and institutions claim patents are a just...

-The Hindu Over the last few decades, intellectual property rules have served as a lethal barrier to the right to access healthcare Even an unprecedented pandemic can do little, it appears, to upset the existing global regime governing Monopoly rights over the production and distribution of life-saving drugs. If anything, since the onset of COVID-19, we’ve only seen a reaffirmation of intellectual property rules that have served as a lethal barrier to...

-The Hindu They seek waiver on some provisions of world agreements that regulate intellectual property rights to expedite steps to contain pandemic India and South Africa, in a formal submission to the World Trade Organization (WTO) on October 2, sought a waiver on certain provisions of the international agreements that regulate intellectual property rights to speed up efforts to prevent, treat and contain the COVID-19 pandemic. In the communication, the countries said there...