Many advocates for developing countries say a TRIPS (Agreement on Trade-Related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights) waiver is needed to accelerate access to vaccines, treatments and COVID-19 tests, but most speakers at an American Bar Association-convened panel said that countries already have the power to curtail pharmaceutical patents for a pandemic, and that technical knowledge and input shortages are a bigger barrier than patents.

Four intellectual property industry groups, in a letter to U.S. Trade Representative Katherine Tai, voiced their support for the U.S.'s opposition to the TRIPS waiver at the World Trade Organization. The American Intellectual Property Law Association, Intellectual Property Owners Association, the Licensing Executives Society (USA and Canada) Inc. and the New York Intellectual Property Law Association said they wrote to protect the IP rights of their members that have incentivized the innovations that “allowed us to combat COVID-19 and continues to do so.” The TRIPS waiver would waive IP rights relating to the “prevention, containment or treatment” of the novel coronavirus for a limited period of time. The industry groups argue that it has been IP itself that has allowed for life-saving innovations and facilitated the sharing of technical information with appropriate protections. They also suggest that they know of no data that shows IP rights are restricting vaccine development.

A top European Commission trade official said that it's not reasonable to expect that countries can agree on reforms to dispute settlement that would satisfy the U.S. by November this year. So, Ignacio Garcia Bercero said, countries will need to set a goal of restoring the binding dispute settlement system for the 2023 ministerial meeting of the World Trade Organization. “The WTO without binding dispute settlement is not the WTO,” Garcia Bercero said during a presentation online at the Peterson Institute for International Economics on March 19. “The continued escalation of conflicts if we don’t have a functioning dispute settlement system should be something we should all be worried about.”

A former World Trade Organization appellate body member and a longtime U.S. trade representative's environment advisory committee member agree that an attempt to create a carbon adjustment mechanism by the European Union is likely to violate trade law and support protectionist aims.

The European Union and U.S. have moved closer to each other's positions on World Trade Organization reform, panelists on a webinar agreed, but that's not to say it's going to be quick or easy to get the appellate body restarted.

CBP issued a notice in the March 10 Customs Bulletin (Vol. 55, No. 9) regarding the dates and draft agenda for the 67th Session of the World Customs Organization’s Harmonized System Committee (HSC), which will meet virtually March 31-April 9. Among other things, the HSC issues classification decisions on the interpretation of the Harmonized System (HS) in the form of published tariff classification opinions or amendments to the Explanatory Notes. It also considers amendments to the legal text of the HS.

The Office of the U.S. Trade Representative is seeking comments on the complaint that Hong Kong has raised at the World Trade Organization by April 12. The territory of Hong Kong has said that the U.S. is breaking WTO rules by requiring that exporters mark goods from Hong Kong as Made in China, rather than Made in Hong Kong. The U.S. issued an executive order last year making the change because of China's political crackdown against Hong Kong. The marking rule does not affect tariff treatment (see 2008130028).

U.S. Chamber of Commerce Senior Vice President Patrick Kilbride said existing intellectual property rights “formed the legal and economic basis for an unprecedented level of highly successful collaborations between government, industry, academia” and non-governmental organizations, He said the Chamber supports the COVAX global initiative and removing regulatory barriers to boost distribution of COVID-19 vaccines but not a waiver of IP rights. Proposals to waive IP rights “are misguided and a distraction from the real work of reinforcing supply chains and assisting countries to procure, distribute and administer vaccines to billions of the world’s citizens. Diminishing intellectual property rights would make it more difficult to quickly develop and distribute vaccines or treatments in the future pandemics the world will face,” Kilbride said in a statement issued March 2.

The House Ways and Means Trade Subcommittee chairman, along with two members of the former NAFTA working group, lent their voices to a letter asking the administration to drop its opposition to a TRIPS waiver at the World Trade Organization. The Trade-Related Aspects of Intellectual Property waiver, requested by India and South Africa, would temporarily end patent protections for new vaccines and diagnostic tests used against COVID-19. Countries are already allowed to do compulsory licenses in the case of emergencies, but only after negotiations on compensating the company for the right to manufacture the drug failed.

Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala was officially confirmed as the next director-general of the World Trade Organization on Feb. 15, and the U.S. charge d'affaires, David Bisbee, in Geneva said she has deep knowledge and experience in “economics, trade, and diplomacy.” He said, “Dr. Okonjo-Iweala has promised that under her leadership it will not be business as usual for the WTO, and we are excited and confident that she has the skills necessary to make good on this promise.” Myron Brilliant, vice president for international affairs at the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, in congratulating Okonjo-Iweala, said that “we need to restore the WTO as a forum for meaningful trade negotiations and the settlement of commercial disputes. We’re committed to doing our part to make that happen.”