COVID-19 is the most severe pandemic for our generation. Open Technology can help and we are supporting a number of initiatives worldwide.

Open COVID Pledge – Removing Obstacles to Sharing IP in the Fight Against COVID-19. This grants the public free, temporary access to IP rights in support of solving the COVID-19 crisis, removing unnecessary obstacles to dissemination of the knowledge and inventions that could save lives and limit suffering. 

Open Letter addressed to Dr Francis Gurry, Director General, World Intellectual Property Organization, to encourage all WIPO member states to take advantage of flexibilities in the international system that permit uses of intellectual property-protected works to fight COVID-2019. 

These two initiatives are important and well-timed during this pandemic and HKCOTA fully supports their causes. Moreover, to further illustrate the impact of these causes, we would like to give an example on what a flexible Intellectual property system can do in fighting COVID-2019. In many places in the world, medical supplies to combat COVID-2019 are hard to find. Open-Source Medical Hardware is a method to manufacture these supplies locally on the foundation sharing intellectual property.

When the pandemic subsides, the citizens of the world will learn from this tragedy. HKCOTA will continue to advocate Open Technology as a crucial component for improvement – putting restrictions on intellectual property should be the special case, and sharing is the default. If sharing of intellectual property is the default, when another crisis strikes, the world can react much faster without the current obstacles.