German Chancellor Angela Merkel reiterated her opposition to exempting the intellectual property rights of the Coronavirus vaccine on Wednesday, Reuters and the Financial Times reported. She said she did not believe that exemption from patent protection would solve the problem of vaccine supply, and that patent protection protected the creativity and innovation of enterprises. She also stressed that the risks of exempting the patent for the Coronavirus vaccine outweigh the opportunities.
U.S. Trade Representative Dai Wei said the U.S. government supports a temporary waiver of intellectual property rights related to the Coronavirus vaccine in response to Coronavirus outbreak. In response to this statement, a spokesman for the German federal government on the 6th of this month expressed opposition, and stressed that intellectual property protection as a source of innovation, the future must also be protected.
