[2][3] The two countries are suggesting a temporary patent waiver for COVID-19 drugs, COVID-19 vaccines and related equipment and technologies in four categories of intellectual property under the TRIPS agreement.

[4][5][6] The four categories, as enunciated in sections of the TRIPS agreement, cover– copyright, industrial designs, patents and protection of undisclosed information.

[8][9] Reuters noted that the European Union, the United States and Switzerland, countries opposing the waiver, are home to large pharmaceutical companies and have excellent domestic vaccine availability.

[16] Precedents include an African Union communication to the World Health Organization, urging it to ensure universal access to vaccines, in June 2020.

The companies also get to keep the IP for technological advances made with public funding, allowing them to make more profit in the future.

While "Big Pharma" and the state are frequently identified as key to creating the structures that motivate market incentives, philanthropies also play an important role.

[26] Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus also listed the pandemic's effects on child development and education, and argued that companies would still get royalties, likening the arrangements to those used in wartime.

Pharmaceutical companies have argued that the WTO's existing compulsory licensing rules were equivalent to the proposed waiver.

[9] Pharmaceutical companies maintain IP "tickets", with multiple patents, copyrights, trade secrets, and undisclosed test datasets for each medicine they make.

Negotiating the bureaucracy has been called "nigh impossible" for the complex multi-country multi-component supply chains of some COVID-19 vaccine manufacture.