IPR and beyond: Multi-stakeholder partnership and collaboration to enhance sustainability in health

COVID-19 turned out to be the perfect storm bringing the world to a halt. In essence, it becomes a precedent for crisis management not only at the governmental level but also within the innovation landscape. Without a doubt, the IP system has not escaped from the hot seat, so that society and stakeholders have questioned whether the IP system is poised with the right tools to promote the multi-stakeholder collaboration needed to share and co-create know-how and innovations to overcome the challenge. Indeed, in accordance with SDG 17, one of the key issues to tackle in this discourse is the need to strengthen the means of implementation and revitalise multi-stakeholder partnerships and collaboration to enhance sustainability in health. This calls for better IPR architectures and structures to enable much more than just technology transfer. This chapter digs into these complexities through the lens of three key case studies related to the COVID-19 crisis to shed light on the shortcomings of the current system and propose suitable solutions for proactively supporting multi-stakeholder collaboration with IPR to foster sustainability in health and beyond.