Patent Pools Before the Next Pandemic: Medicines Patent Pool and the WHO Pandemic Agreement
Introduction : A pandemic can expose a paradox in pharmaceutical innovation. The technologies needed to respond to a health emergency may exist, but access to the patents, know-how, manufacturing expertise and regulatory knowledge necessary to reproduce them may remain fragmented among different rights holders. During COVID-19, this fragmentation became a practical obstacle to scaling production. The resulting debate has shifted from whether intellectual property should be protected to a more precise question - how can intellectual property be organised quickly enough to permit wider manufacturing without destroying the incentives that produced the technology in the first place?
Patent pools provide one possible answer. Their value lies not in abolishing patent rights, but in reducing the transaction costs of obtaining multiple permissions. The Medicines Patent Pool (MPP) has demonstrated how this model can operate through voluntary, non-exclusive licensing. The WHO Pandemic Agreement, adopted in 2025, now gives licensing and intellectual-property pooling an explicit place within the international framework for pandemic preparedness. Yet the Agreement does not itself create an automatic global patent pool. Its effectiveness will depend on whether governments and private rights holders convert broad commitments into operational licensing arrangements.
What a Patent Pool Actually Solves
A patent pool generally brings together rights relating to a particular technology so that authorised users can obtain access through a common licensing structure rather than negotiating separately with every patent owner. In complex pharmaceutical technologies, this can matter because a single product or manufacturing platform may implicate several patents, held by different entities and covering different aspects of the technology. WIPO has identified the reduction of transaction costs and licensing uncertainty as important advantages of patent pools in technology markets.
The MPP applies this principle through a public-health-oriented licensing model. It negotiates voluntary licences with patent holders and then makes the relevant rights available to qualified manufacturers through sublicensing. Its importance is therefore slightly different from a conventional private patent pool based on reciprocal cross-licensing. The MPP functions primarily as an intermediary that aggregates licensing opportunities and makes them usable by manufacturers in low- and middle-income countries.
That distinction matters for pandemic preparedness. A patent pool cannot manufacture vaccines, therapeutics or diagnostics merely by collecting patent documents. The legal right to practise a patented invention may be necessary, but it may not be sufficient. Manufacturing often depends on technical knowledge, quality systems, inputs, regulatory experience and skilled personnel. A licensing architecture that addresses only patent claims can consequently leave the central manufacturing bottleneck untouched.
COVID-19 Demonstrated Why Licensing Must Include Know-How
The experience of COVID-19 provides a particularly strong lesson. MPP’s review of therapeutic licensing during the pandemic identified early licensing, transfer of know-how, rapid availability of critical inputs, quality-assurance mechanisms, regional manufacturing and non-exclusive agreements as important factors for making voluntary licences effective. The lesson is significant because it changes the meaning of “technology transfer”. It cannot simply mean supplying a patent number and permitting a manufacturer to read the corresponding specification.
This is especially important for biologics and technologically complex vaccines, where operational knowledge may not be fully captured in patent documents. A manufacturer may need process parameters, technical protocols, training and troubleshooting support before it can produce a consistent and quality-assured product. Academic analysis after COVID-19 similarly identified trade secrets and manufacturing know-how as a distinct barrier that patent compulsory licensing alone cannot necessarily overcome.
The MPP model therefore suggests that a pandemic licensing mechanism should be designed as a package. Patent rights should be connected to know-how, training, quality assurance and manufacturing arrangements. The legal licence is the entry point, not the whole transaction.
The MPP Has Also Moved Beyond the Original HIV Model
The MPP’s recent work demonstrates that patent pooling is no longer limited to antiretroviral medicines. Its 2025 Annual Report records agreements covering HIV treatments, hepatitis C, tuberculosis, cancer, long-acting technologies, influenza and COVID-19 products and technologies. During 2023-2025, the organisation concluded six new licence agreements and enabled nine new products to reach low- and middle-income countries.
Its expansion into diagnostics is particularly relevant to pandemic preparedness. In May 2025, MPP and WHO announced a sublicensing arrangement with Nigerian company Codix Bio for rapid diagnostic technology transferred from SD Biosensor. The technology was initially intended for HIV testing but could also be adapted for malaria, syphilis and other diseases, demonstrating why licensing a flexible technological platform can have preparedness value extending beyond the disease for which the technology was first developed.
MPP has also used the model for technologies whose pandemic relevance is more direct. During COVID-19, it negotiated non-exclusive licences for Pfizer’s nirmatrelvir/ritonavir, MSD’s molnupiravir and Shionogi’s ensitrelvir fumaric acid. The significance of these arrangements is not that voluntary licensing is universally sufficient. Rather, they show that the speed of access can be materially improved when licensing negotiations and manufacturer selection have an established institutional pathway.
The WHO Pandemic Agreement
The WHO Pandemic Agreement, adopted by the World Health Assembly on 20 May 2025, incorporates intellectual-property licensing and technology transfer directly into its architecture. Article 11 calls on Parties to promote or facilitate technology transfer as mutually agreed, including knowledge, skills, technical expertise and other know-how. It also provides for measures to enhance the availability of licences on a non-exclusive, transparent and broad geographical basis and encourages private rights holders to adopt similar approaches.
Most importantly for patent-pool models, Article 11(5) expressly contemplates mechanisms involving the pooling of intellectual property, relevant knowledge, skills and technical expertise and data, together with transparent, non-exclusive licensing. This is more significant than a general statement supporting access to medicines. It identifies the institutional architecture through which access may be organised.
At the same time, the language matters. Article 11 does not automatically compel a private patent holder to surrender its rights. Technology transfer is framed as mutually agreed, and measures concerning private rights holders are principally expressed through encouragement. The Agreement therefore operates through facilitation, incentives, national implementation and cooperation rather than establishing a universal compulsory patent pool.
That limitation is not necessarily a defect. A functioning pool requires identifiable rights, participating manufacturers, quality systems and predictable licensing conditions. A legal obligation without an operational mechanism may still leave manufacturers unable to produce the relevant technology. The MPP experience suggests that institutional capacity is as important as the underlying legal entitlement.
The Agreement Preserves Compulsory Licensing as a Backstop
The WHO framework does not, however, displace compulsory licensing. Article 11(4) expressly reaffirms that WTO members may use the TRIPS Agreement and the Doha Declaration on TRIPS and Public Health to protect public health, including during future pandemics.
That is important because voluntary licensing and compulsory licensing solve different problems. A voluntary pool aims to create a negotiated pathway that can be activated before or during an emergency. Compulsory licensing provides a legal route for overriding exclusive patent rights without the consent of the right holder, subject to applicable conditions. TRIPS Article 31 recognises compulsory licensing as a flexibility within the international patent system, while the Doha Declaration makes clear that each WTO member has the right to determine the grounds upon which compulsory licences are granted.
The export problem is addressed separately through the TRIPS Article 31bis system, which permits production under a special compulsory licence for export to eligible importing countries facing insufficient manufacturing capacity. Thus, compulsory licensing remains important, but it is inherently more administratively and politically demanding than an established voluntary licensing mechanism.
For preparedness purposes, the more resilient structure may therefore be layered - voluntary licensing and patent pools for rapid scale-up, backed by domestic and international compulsory-licensing powers where negotiations fail or access conditions require a stronger intervention.
What the MPP Model Teaches Future Pandemic Agreements
Three lessons stand out. First, licensing must begin before the emergency peaks. Negotiating rights after global demand has already exploded leaves little time to establish manufacturers and supply chains. MPP’s own pandemic-preparedness strategy therefore emphasises advance licensing, technology transfer and pre-selection of potential manufacturing partners.
Second, non-exclusive licensing is important because preparedness depends on redundancy. A single licensed manufacturer remains a single point of failure. Multiple qualified manufacturers can create regional production capacity and reduce dependency on one facility or supply chain. MPP’s licensing model is deliberately non-exclusive for this reason.
Third, patents should not be negotiated in isolation from manufacturing capability. The 2025 diagnostic sublicensing arrangement, the mRNA Technology Transfer Programme and MPP’s broader licensing portfolio demonstrate that legal access becomes much more meaningful when accompanied by practical technology transfer and manufacturing support.
Conclusion
The broader significance of patent pools, therefore, is not simply cheaper licensing. Their real value is institutional speed. A pandemic preparedness system needs to answer, before the emergency becomes acute, who owns the rights, who can license them, which manufacturers qualify, what know-how will be transferred, where products can be supplied, and how royalties and quality requirements will operate.
The WHO Pandemic Agreement has now recognised these elements within the international framework. But recognition alone does not guarantee access. The decisive test will be whether governments, patent holders and licensing institutions build arrangements that can move from a pathogen being identified to a manufacturable technology being shared in months rather than years. The MPP experience suggests that patent pooling can form an important part of that architecture, provided it is designed as a technology-transfer mechanism rather than merely a repository of patents.
Author :- Amrita Pradhan, in case of any query, contact us at Global Patent Filing or write back us via email at support@globalpatentfiling.com.
References
- World Intellectual Property Organization, Promoting Access to Medical Technologies and Innovation: Intersections between Public Health, Intellectual Property and Trade (2nd edn, WIPO Publication No 628 2020) 160 https://www.wipo.int/edocs/pubdocs/en/wipo_pub_628_2020.pdf
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- WTO, ‘TRIPS and Public Health: Compulsory Licensing of Pharmaceuticals and TRIPS’ https://www.wto.org/english/tratop_e/trips_e/public_health_faq_e.htm
- World Health Organization, ‘Member States advance negotiations on pathogen access and benefit-sharing ahead of UN General Assembly meeting on pandemics’ (18 September 2026) https://www.who.int/news/item/18-09-2026-member-states-advance-negotiations-on-pathogen-access-and-benefit-sharing-ahead-of-un-general-assembly-meeting-on-pandemics
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