While in regions like Europe and North America national vaccination campaigns have been picking up speed over the past months, the less well-off majority of the world has seen little to no vaccine supplies.

Why does it have to be like that?

Is there a moral obligation to make health innovations easily available globally?

What about the intellectual property rights of the researchers and creators of these innovations, should they not profit from their work?

Podcast host Prof Sigrid Quack discusses these and other questions with our guest expert, Professor Susan Sell, who echoes a growing consensus that our intellectual property regime, that is so essential for 21st century intellectual monopoly capitalism, is hampering global health outcomes - not just in the current pandemic.

Susan Sell is an eminent expert on the politics of intellectual property, trade, investment, private power and the international political economy more broadly. She is “RegNet” Professor at the School of Regulation and Global Governance at the Australian National University at Canberra. Her publications include books like Private Power, Public Law: the Globalization of Intellectual Property Rights, as well as articles and a recent special issue on Political Economies of Global Health.

In our Research Feature, we continue our series on Internet Governance Research at the Centre. This time, we speak to Dr Janet Hui Xue about her project on “Personal Data in the Digital Economy”, in which she compares how the collection and use of personal data is being governed in the EU and China. Janet analyses the tools and governance models that have been tried in either the EU or China to strike a balance between business innovation and the protection of consumer rights in the context of personal data.

You can get in touch with Janet via Twitter: @Janet_Xue

If you have feedback or questions for us, we look forward to your comments to our twitter account @GCR_21 via the hashtag #cooperadiopodcast or you can get in touch via e-mail: cooperadio@gcr21.uni-due.de.

Timestamps: 

00:00 - Introduction

03:52 - Patents, Profits & Pandemics: Interview with Susan Sell

39:47 - Research Feature: Janet Hui Xue

Further reading & Sources: 

Ugo Pagano (2014): The crisis of intellectual monopoly capitalism

Nature Editorial: A patent waiver on COVID vaccines is right and fair, Nature 593, 478 (2021)