The Founding Fathers believed that intellectual property (IP) rights were so important that they are the only property rights protected under the Constitution.  Article I, Section 8, Clause 8 grants Congress the enumerated power “To promote the progress of science and useful arts, by securing for limited times to authors and inventors the exclusive right to their respective writings and discoveries.” 

IP rights are essential to the development of life-saving medicines as well as the creation of goods and services.  As Citizens Against Government Waste (CAGW) has noted, “few people realize the nearly every product they use is the result of someone’s idea, or IP; nor are they likely to know the value of IP to the economy. And it is even more unlikely that they understand the impact of IP theft on either the creative process or the tens of millions of ordinary Americans who participate in that process.”

While the United States has the best IP protection in the world, those policies are not always carried through to trade and international agreements, as CAGW has suggested.  The Trump administration got off to a good start in recognizing the importance of IP rights when the United States Trade Representative (USTR) issued its February 2025 Trade Policy Agenda WTO Annual Report.  This report noted that the Biden administration’s support of the World Trade Organization’s Trade-Related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights (TRIPS) waivers “has not increased access to COVID-19 vaccines but instead may actually negatively impact the development of new treatments and cures for the next pandemic by weakening the standard for intellectual property protections and furthering a false narrative about the role of intellectual property and access to medicines.”  An argument in support of the TRIPS waiver was that the vaccines’ IP rights created barriers to access.  But COVID vaccines were already being made available worldwide through COVAX and Gavi at minimal or no cost.   

CAGW opposed the waiver in a  May 6, 2021, blog post, which noted that the Biden administration’s purported supported of IP rights was undermined by its support of the waiver, which would impede rather than increase the availability of vaccines.

The TRIPS waiver did more harm than good by hindering future healthcare development, and risking more government involvement in healthcare.  The U.S. must do everything possible to protect future drug development and promote innovation, which will ensure that the next time the world needs life-saving vaccines in record-breaking time, U.S. drug companies can make that happen in a stable environment for research and development.  President Trump’s decision to overturn the TRIPS waivers is a welcome and critical step for protecting IP as envisioned by the Founding Fathers and promoting future drug development.