Patents and Pandemic : A Balance Between Public and Commercial Rights

The pandemic forced the entire civilization to adapt to the new normal. Covid-19 made people reimagine and recalibrate their ways of working. The field of IPR was no different. The pandemic forced dramatic changes in the IPR regime, especially, Patents, as at the helm of battling the pandemic were the drugs and vaccines which were being researched and developed with extensive resources, both monetary and intellectual. This also re-sparked the long standing debate over patent protection to medicinal and pharmaceutical products and processes. While, the TRIPS waiver and other domestic changes in law and policy allowed for relaxed patent protection and mass exploitation, allowing for mass manufacturing and disseminating of drugs and vaccines, this also caused critiques to question rigidity of the IPR regime and most importantly the certainty of protection for capital intensive research. This paper aims at giving an overview of incentive offered by IPR, especially Patents and the change in dynamics during exigencies like the Covid-19 pandemic