What the United States (US) Intellectual Property (IP) waiver announcement tells us about patent values: A patent premium perspective on Covid-19 vaccine patents
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Various innovation system actors, including government and policy makers have a long-standing interest in understanding the value of patent. The recent announcement of the US government to support waiving IP rights for Covid-19 vaccines provides a unique opportunity to learn better understanding the market value. With the announcement being specific to IP rights, respectively the patents protecting the Covid-19 vaccines, that announcement can be interpreted as a natural experiment from which we can directly observe effects. Immediately following that announcement, the stock price values of all four pharmaceutical companies with market-approved Covid-19 vaccines in the US and Europe dropped significantly. Comparing the pre- and post-announcement market capitalisation of the four companies, we can estimate the total value of Covid-19 vaccine patents to be B$37. Following the patent premium definition that value does not reflect the value of the actual vaccines, which is most likely to be much higher, but only the value of the patents protecting them.