us i'm now joined by sapna kumar she is a professor of intellectual property law at the university of houston welcome to the program sapna put this move into the gaps for us how much impact is this move from the u.s. going to have in terms of ip protections for co the vaccines. well on one hand this is very significant the u.s. government has a long tradition of punishing countries that import or produce drugs without the pharmaceutical companies permission even during times of crisis on the other hand significant obstacles do still remain in terms of whether the european union and other key players will ultimately agree to join the u.s. in supporting the us. why is the u.s. doing it at this stage the biden administration had promised the ip rights would not be an obstacle to the cove in $1000.00 response so part of this is filling a campaign promise and part of this is sort of a growing realisation that pharmaceutical companies have really been calling all of the shots and that perhaps they haven't been acting in the public interest and maybe it's time for the government to take a more aggressive ap

us i'm now joined by sapna kumar she is a professor of intellectual property law at the university of houston welcome to the program sapna put this move into context for us how much impact is this new from the u.s. going to have in terms of ip protections for covert vaccines. well on one hand this is very significant the u.s. government has a long tradition of punishing countries that import or produce drugs without the pharmaceutical companies permission even during times of crisis on the other hand significant obstacles do still remain in terms of whether the european union and other key players will ultimately agree to join the u.s. in supporting the us why is the u.s. doing it at this stage the biden administration had promised the ip rights would not be an obstacle to the cove in 1000 response so part of this is filling a campaign promise and part of this is sort of a growing realisation that pharmaceutical companies have really been calling all of the shots and that perhaps they haven't been acting in the public interest and maybe it's time for the government to take a more aggressive approach