Should the intellectual property rights on the first Covid-19 vaccines be temporarily lifted in applying the Trade-Related Aspect of Intellectual Property (TRIPS) flexibility? Is it right to grant the first generation of Covid-19 vaccines a special treatment from an IPR perspective? On what grounds? By extensively reviewing the available medical and economic literature on the subject, this chapter will guide the reader step-by-step to the leading scientific, political, and cultural challenges in granting broad worldwide access to vaccination. The accumulated delays in providing effective Covid-19 vaccine intervention in the low- and middle-income countries are ultimately responsible for the virus circulation at the global level and the proliferation of immunity-escaping variants. Therefore governmental rationality around the world would suggest any possible active policy tool to scale up the current vaccines supply. However, not to prevent future investment in R&D, the governments should bear the cost of the expected increased industry obsolescence determined by a temporary patent waiver; this includes public patent-buy-outs and regulated public-private R&D partnerships.
ABSTRACTFirm success is often associated with the development of better products. Private firms undertake applied R&D seeking market advantage, by capitalizing on the freely accessible results of basic research. But unpatentable basic research often fails to address applied R&D open problems. What is the role of the incentives in improving the innovative performance of an economy by matching partially motivated public researchers to their mission? Sometimes government‐funded research projects are mission‐directed, and yet in many cases the public sector academics indulge in carrier‐driven research. An innovation system where, as in the United States, basic research is also driven by patents implicitly sets an ex‐post incentive to the researchers guided by invisible hand. For a public innovation system – like the European one – designing an incentive scheme to motivate public researchers is of key importance for fostering the performance of the economic system. This paper extends the Schumpeterian multisector growth model with vertical innovation by highlighting a link between the degree of 'targetness' of public research and aggregate innovation. A positive effect of social capital is also proved.
