Ruth Okediji

Eunice Yang first tasted entrepreneurship in her twenties, when she helped run her family’s carton manufacturing business. Five years later, after the business was acquired,…

In an inaugural University-wide event, Faith & Veritas ’23 will bring together Harvard’s Christian alumni, faculty, and students March 30-April 2 in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Faith…

An op-ed by Ruth L. Okediji: On Wednesday May 5, the US moved to back a Covid-19 vaccine patent waiver that was being debated at the World Trade Organization (WTO). The proposal, first put forward by South Africa and India in October 2020, seeks to temporarily lift certain intellectual property rights that belong to pharmaceutical companies so that other nations can develop generic versions of the drugs. As awareness of vaccine inequality has grown, patents and other types of intellectual property have become central to how the world emerges from the pandemic. Ironically, the patent system was supposed to improve public welfare. Here's how the rationale goes: in return for disclosing her invention -- i.e. by seeking a patent -- an inventor would be able to, among other things, exclusively make, use, and sell that patented product for 20 years. This would -- as the US Constitution puts it -- "promote the progress of science and the useful arts" by incentivizing the creation and dissemination of lifesaving products. In practice however, the global patent system has enabled the creation of drugs that pharmaceutical companies can sell at high prices, to the patients who can afford them and largely for diseases prevalent in wealthy countries. Pharmaceutical companies argue that these high prices are necessary to recoup substantial research and development (R+D) expenditures, but patent rules also prevent poor countries from producing medicines locally to meet domestic needs.

African innovators have shown creativity and ingenuity in finding solutions to fight the COVID-19 pandemic, but face legal barriers to safeguarding their intellectual property. There have been 192 innovations directed at COVID-19 from Nigeria alone, as well as more than 90 from South Africa, it was revealed during a webinar hosted by Harvard Law School’s Center on the Legal Profession, and digital platform Africa.com. “One of the things COVID-19 has done is to underscore the importance of innovation in societies that have been viewed as lacking the intellectual capacity to deploy innovation,” said Professor Ruth L. Okediji of Harvard Law School. “Many innovations in Africa lack the protection necessary to make business models scalable and meaningful.” The webinar brought together top legal minds to discuss Law and crisis management: Working with lawyers in business, government and society to manage the challenges of COVID-19...David Wilkins, Faculty Director at the Center on the Legal Profession, started off with a brief presentation on the role of lawyers in society, reminding participants that one of the continent’s greatest freedom fighters, Nelson Mandela, had been a lawyer. “We tend to think of lawyers as technical appliers of the law…Lawyers must also be counsellors to help clients make decisions that are not only legal but also right…Lawyers must also be leaders who play a critical role in leading key organizations,” Wilkins said.