Crisis, pandemic, intellectual property, licensing, patent pledge, compulsory licensing, incumbents, new entrants, COVID-19Within national and international innovation systems a pandemic calls for
large-scale action by many actors across sectors, to mobilise resources,
developing and manufacturing Crisis-Critical Products (CC-Products) efficiently
and in the huge quantities needed. Nowadays, this also includes digital
innovations from complex epidemiological models, AI, to open data platforms for
prevention, diagnostic and treatment. Amongst the many challenges during a
pandemic, innovation and manufacturing stakeholders find themselves engaged in
new relationships, and are likely to face intellectual property (IP) related
challenges. This paper adopts an IP perspective on the COVID-19 pandemic to
identify pandemic related IP considerations and IP challenges. The focus is on
challenges related to research, development and urgent upscaling of capacity to
manufacture CC-Products in the huge volumes suddenly in demand. Its purpose is
to provide a structure for steering clear of IP challenges to avoid delays in
fighting a pandemic. We identify 4 stakeholder groups concerned with IP
challenges: (i) governments, (ii) organisations owning existing Crisis-Critical
IP, described as incumbents in Crisis-Critical Sectors (CC-Sectors), (iii)
manufacturing firms from other sectors normally not producing CC-Products
suddenly rushing into CC-Sectors to support the manufacturing of CC-Products
(new entrants), and (iv) voluntary grassroot initiatives that are formed during
a pandemic. This paper discusses IP challenges related to the development and
manufacturing of technologies and products for (i) prevention (of spread), (ii)
diagnosis of infected patients and (iii) the development of treatments. We
offer an initial discussion of potential response measures to reduce IP
associated risks among industrial stakeholders during a pandemic