Vaccine Patents, mRNA Technology Transfer And The Right To Health: Reassessing India's Intellectual Property Framework For Future Pandemics

Abstract

The COVID-19 pandemic exposed a structural weakness in the relationship between pharmaceutical patent protection, manufacturing capacity and the right to health. India and South Africa’s 2020 proposal to suspend selected obligations under the Agreement on Trade-Related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights (TRIPS) challenged a system in which vaccine innovation was globally valuable but production remained geographically concentrated. The debate cannot be reduced to a choice between patents and public health. Patents may support investment and rapid innovation, yet exclusive rights, trade secrets, supply contracts and national procurement policies can together restrict timely access to life-saving technologies. The mRNA experience adds a further complication: a patent waiver may remove liability for infringement without transferring the tacit know-how, process controls, regulatory data and skilled personnel required to reproduce a vaccine at scale. This article argues that India’s future-pandemic framework should retain patent incentives while converting public-health safeguards from dormant exceptions into operational access architecture. The proposed framework combines a pandemic-triggered compulsory-licensing pathway, government-use powers, transparency obligations, public-funding conditions, disclosure of relevant patent and know-how information, advance manufacturing agreements, and sustained investment in regional technology-transfer and fill-and-finish capacity. India should use its constitutional commitment to social welfare and its experience as a supplier of affordable medicines to advocate a treaty-compatible system in which access; technology transfer and innovation are designed together rather than sequenced after a crisis.