Just so we're clear here... there's a variety of types of IP. Patents are one area of that IP. An other (and potentially of more importance) side of IP is trade secrets. I'm sure you know this, but for the others who may not, when you patent something, you have disclose how that thing works. You put it out there so that you have protection should someone else try to do the same thing. Trade secrets are undisclosed...Moderna has said they won't enforce their patent rights on their vaccine, but simply saying that isn't good enough. I saw a thing yesterday that one of the motivations guiding Pfizer and Moderna in this area is that they don't want their IP out in the wild because they are working on COVID therapeutics that trade on some of the same ground, and they want to protect their market for those drugs, which are still months out. If that's true, that's super gross.
If the ruling is that people can use the patents and Moderna, Pfizer, Biontech, whoever now can't go after people that are using the patented technology: cool. That's fine. But how exactly are they going to force companies to release trade secrets? And if they're not, won't this lead to companies not filing for patents and keep things proprietary as trade secrets? It just seems to me that this move will cause companies to share less rather than share more in the future.