Intellectual property and health has risen again to the top of the global trade agenda and to front-page attention. In October 2020, India and South Africa proposed a waiver of the World Trade Organization’s Agreement on Trade-Related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights as needed to promote the prevention, treatment and containment of COVID. A legal and policy debate has ensued over whether the waiver can help global treatment aims. The U.S. endorsement of text-based work on the waiver proposal indicates that it will feature strongly in the agenda of the WTO Ministerial Conference in Geneva in November 2021. Sponsored by the Committee on International Intellectual Property, this panel brings together leading intellectual property experts to explore the process and politics of the waiver proposal as it makes its way toward possible adoption.

Host institutions: Committee on International Intellectual Property, American Branch of the International Law Association; Program on Information Justice and Intellectual Property