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new drugs and vaccines, spurring innovation and efficiency. Processes in creating drugs are trade secrets and part of the investment in creating these drugs.

But drug companies knowing they have no chance to reap any profits means fewer resources will be devoted to the effort of developing the patentable, efficient, proprietary processes necessary to make a bigger profit, resulting in less product being made available. Innovation will be stifled and less efficient, but well known, processes to develop vaccines will be used instead. In the end, vaccines desperately needed may not be available because no one developed a more efficient method of doing it.

Drug companies need a to make profits. They do this, in part, by patenting and licensing their production processes to help defray the huge costs of getting that product to market. They are interested in selling their product, not killing people. Withholding processes that can increase the efficiency of vaccine production in the face of a global pandemic is a huge PR black-eye for any drug company. Governments would intervene and the company may not survive the crisis.

They understand the need to move fast in an emergency and leaving the normal business channels intact means fewer hassles in ramping up production since licenses, permissions, fees and costs can be negotiated quicker through established business practices and means. It maintains solvency for companies that may otherwise be forced out of business by heavy-handed government practices and allows them to be solvent after the emergency to continue to produce the drugs upon which we've come to depend. It strictly limits the licenses involved in allowing other companies to use previously patented methods to develop vaccines for their own gain and profit. It keeps everyone honest and doesn't give an unfair advantage to other, less innovative companies by giving them a windfall in learning secret, more efficient processes upon which they could potentially reap an undeserved profit once the emergency has passed.

If any legislation is needed, it is to put in place an efficient means of quickly determining how licenses for vaccine-making process patents will be assigned, used and paid for in the event of an emergency so that multiple companies can begin churning out vaccines as quickly as possible. If the plan is set in advance, letting the companies know in advance of who will do what, who gets paid what and what happens after the emergency has passed, then at least the emergency can be met without by existing businesses and organizations without the need to be overseen by wasteful government bureaucracies or threatening the post-emergency solvency of drug companies who actually developed the life-saving processes in the first place.

Learn more about this author, P. H. Campbell.
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