Why Pfizer’s Friends Want Biden to Intervene in Brazil

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Bruna Prado/AP Photo

A teenage girl is injected with a dose of the Pfizer COVID-19 vaccine, on the first day of a vaccination campaign for 17-year-olds, at a vaccination center in Rio de Janeiro, August 26, 2021.

Brazil’s Senate has passed a bill that would reform Brazil’s laws to make it easier to suspend patent rules in order to expand access to the COVID vaccine and other medicines. The bill, which awaits Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro’s signature to become law, would make it easier for the government to grant compulsory patent licenses during public-health emergencies, like the COVID pandemic, without attaining the consent of the patent holder.

Now, an intellectual-property “ownership rights” organization backed by the pharmaceutical giant Pfizer is pressing the Biden administration to intervene against the proposed Brazilian bill. Advocates are concerned that the move could harm vaccine access in a country that is just 29 percent fully vaccinated, and where at least 1 in 364 residents have died of COVID. (Deaths have declined slightly in recent weeks, and Brazil has surpassed the United States on first doses.)

The bill is supported by public-health advocates. “Adapting compulsory licensing laws to be more expedited and automatic during the pandemic will strengthen countries’ capacity to respond more effectively, both at the national level and through international collaborations,” says the humanitarian group Médecins Sans Frontières.

But powerful industry players in the United States oppose the measure. On August 24, the Intellectual Property Owners Association (IPO) wrote a letter to U.S. Trade Representative Katherine C. Tai and the acting director of the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office, Drew Hirshfeld, saying it is “very concerned about this legislation.” The letter was reported last week by the news site Law360.

There is reason to think that Pfizer collaborates directly with IPO on issues of compulsory licensing.

But Law360 failed to note that Pfizer is a “corporate member” of the organization. According to materials published by IPO, corporate members pay annual dues. Dues payments range from $2,500 to $7,250 a year, depending on the company’s number of patents. The list of corporate members is extensive and includes Microsoft, Akros Pharma, Inc., Alexion Pharmaceuticals, and numerous other companies.

That is not the organization’s only tie to Pfizer. Eric Aaronson, who works as Pfizer’s senior vice president and chief counsel for corporate affairs, intellectual property, and intellectual property enforcement, also serves as a member of the Intellectual Property Owners Association’s board of directors.

There is reason to think that Pfizer collaborates directly with IPO on issues of compulsory licensing. Sharon Reiche, senior corporate counsel for Pfizer, is listed as a moderator for an upcoming September 28 session on “Compulsory Licensing and Related Issues” for the IPO’s 2021 annual meeting. Pfizer did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

The IPO boasts of its influence in government as a key perk for its corporate members. “With IPO, you have a voice in a highly influential government affairs program that engages government legislatures and agencies, courts, and IP offices worldwide to advance the interests of our corporate members,” the organization states in a brochure geared toward companies.

And there are signs that the organization has government connections. U.S. Sen. Patrick Leahy (D-VT), chair of the Senate Subcommittee on Intellectual Property, is listed as a keynote speaker at the IPO’s September 28 virtual annual meeting. And on its website, IPO features an “exclusive Q&A” with Sen. Thom Tillis (R-NC), the ranking member of this subcommittee.

The organization is pushing the Biden administration to take a stand. “Although IPO recognizes that compulsory licenses of IP [intellectual property] rights may be legally permissible in limited and rare situations, IPO believes that licensing of IP rights is best accomplished through voluntary efforts,” its president, Daniel Staudt, wrote in the letter to the U.S. trade representative. “We urge the United States government to reaffirm that U.S. trade policy disfavors laws that would create forced technology transfers in conjunction with compulsory licenses or otherwise.”

The Biden administration has not issued a public response to the letter.

Burcu Kilic, research director for the Access to Medicines program of the watchdog group Public Citizen, called the letter “rubbish.”

“There is no international law supporting their arguments, but this doesn’t stop them,” she told the Prospect. According to the World Trade Organization’s TRIPS Agreement, Kilic noted, countries have a right to issue compulsory licensing if there’s a national emergency. “This is a misinterpretation of the TRIPS Agreement. It’s up to countries to decide,” she added.

“There is no international law supporting their arguments, but this doesn’t stop them.”

Even if the Pfizer-backed advocacy group is not on firm legal ground, its posturing alone could be enough to intimidate President Bolsonaro against signing the bill into law. In 2020, a similar pressure campaign from the International Intellectual Property Alliance successfully pushed South Africa’s president to send back to parliament a bill aimed at amending the country’s copyright rules.

This is not the only form of political pressure Brazilian lawmakers have faced from a Pfizer-linked group. As I noted in a previous piece for In These Times, the executive president of the Brazilian pharmaceutical trade group Interfarma issued a veiled threat in April: If Brazil moves forward with compulsory licensing, the company might withhold its supply of vaccines. Pfizer is one of Interfarma’s clients.

“This is not retaliation,” Elizabeth de Carvalhaes, executive president of Interfarma, told Brazil’s biggest paper, Folha de São Paulo. ​“The demand is much bigger than the supply, and they may find it more advantageous from an economic point of view to sell to countries that do not break patents.”

Pfizer plays a powerful role in the South American country. In late August, Pfizer-BioNTech announced a deal with Brazilian laboratories Eurofarma to produce its COVID-19 vaccine, with the aim of manufacturing 100 million doses for Brazil and other countries, starting in 2022. The company has been a fervent opponent of measures around the world aimed at suspending patent enforcement, from the World Trade Organization to domestic compulsory licensing efforts.

If the Intellectual Property Owners Association’s letter were to play a role in tanking the Brazilian bill, this would set a troubling precedent. Says Kilic of Public Citizen, “Compulsory licensing has always been important for every country that wants to promote access to medicines.”