Geneva, Switzerland · 29 May 2020 — The World Health Organization, in partnership with the Government of Costa Rica, officially launched the COVID-19 Technology Access Pool (C-TAP), a global initiative designed to facilitate equitable and affordable access to COVID-19 health products. The launch followed a Solidarity Call to Action issued in March 2020 by Costa Rican President Carlos Alvarado Quesada, who proposed a voluntary mechanism through which developers of COVID-19 technologies could share their intellectual property, data, and know-how with manufacturers around the world.
The initiative was endorsed by nearly 40 WHO Member States at its launch, a number that would grow to 45 endorsements over time. C-TAP's implementing partners included the Medicines Patent Pool (MPP), the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP), the UN Technology Bank, and Unitaid—each contributing distinct expertise in intellectual property licensing, development programming, and technology transfer.
How C-TAP Was Designed to Work
C-TAP was conceived as a single, transparent global platform where developers of COVID-19 therapeutics, diagnostics, vaccines, and other health products could voluntarily share their intellectual property, knowledge, and data with quality-assured manufacturers. The mechanism operated through public health-driven, transparent, non-exclusive, and voluntary licences.
Unlike compulsory licensing or patent waivers, C-TAP relied entirely on voluntary participation. Patent holders who contributed their rights to the pool would enable non-exclusive licensing to qualified manufacturers globally, allowing production to scale up using untapped manufacturing capacity in multiple regions. Contributors could secure appropriate royalties while expanding access to underserved markets.
The Costa Rican Proposal
The initiative originated from a letter sent by President Alvarado Quesada to WHO Director-General Dr. Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus in March 2020, proposing the creation of a global pool for rights to COVID-19 technologies. Costa Rica's argument was straightforward: the pandemic was a global emergency requiring global cooperation, and intellectual property barriers should not prevent qualified manufacturers in low- and middle-income countries from producing life-saving tools.
The WHO embraced the proposal and issued a Solidarity Call to Action, inviting all Member States, research institutions, and private sector developers to contribute. The call emphasised that sharing intellectual property, knowledge, and data was both a moral imperative and a practical necessity for scaling up global production capacity.
Technology Transfer Beyond Patents
A distinctive feature of C-TAP was its recognition that intellectual property alone is insufficient for technology transfer. The initiative explicitly sought to facilitate the sharing of "know-how"—the tacit knowledge, cell lines, manufacturing processes, and clinical data that enable a manufacturer to actually produce a vaccine or therapeutic. This was a critical distinction, because even when patents are waived or licensed, the absence of process knowledge can delay production by months or years.
C-TAP provided support for technology transfer agreements, including technical assistance from WHO and partner organisations to help manufacturers in various regions meet international standards of quality, safety, and efficacy. The Medicines Patent Pool, with its established expertise in negotiating and administering voluntary licences for HIV and tuberculosis medicines, served as the primary vehicle for sub-licensing technologies to qualified generic manufacturers.
Early Challenges and Pharmaceutical Industry Response
Despite its ambitious design, C-TAP faced significant challenges in its first year. Major pharmaceutical companies developing COVID-19 vaccines did not contribute their technologies to the pool. Several factors contributed to this: companies had entered into bilateral licensing agreements and advance purchase contracts with individual governments and manufacturers; the unprecedented public investment in vaccine development (such as the U.S. Operation Warp Speed programme) came with expectations of priority access; and some companies expressed concerns about the complexity of transferring mRNA technology, which required specialised manufacturing infrastructure.
Some high-income countries were also reluctant to actively support C-TAP, viewing it as potentially undermining the bilateral procurement agreements they had secured. The absence of the United States from the initial endorsers was notable, though the political landscape would shift with the change in administration in 2021.
The First Licensing Agreement
C-TAP's first tangible success came on 23 November 2021, when WHO and the Medicines Patent Pool announced the first transparent, global, non-exclusive licence for a COVID-19 technology. The Spanish National Research Council (CSIC) contributed a COVID-19 serological antibody test technology to C-TAP, marking the first concrete transfer of intellectual property through the platform.
While a diagnostic test was a far cry from a vaccine technology, the agreement demonstrated that the C-TAP mechanism could function. It also highlighted the gap between the platform's ambition and its early results—the technologies most urgently needed (vaccines and therapeutics) remained outside the pool.
Parallel Initiatives and the mRNA Hub
In parallel with C-TAP, WHO launched an expression of interest in April 2021 for the establishment of a COVID-19 mRNA vaccine technology transfer hub to scale up global manufacturing. This initiative, which would ultimately result in the selection of a hub in South Africa, represented a complementary approach to C-TAP—rather than waiting for voluntary contributions from existing manufacturers, WHO would actively build new manufacturing capacity through technology transfer to institutions in low- and middle-income countries.
The mRNA hub was designed to provide training and technology to recipient countries ("spokes"), enabling them to develop their own mRNA vaccine manufacturing capabilities. This approach acknowledged that the voluntary licensing model of C-TAP, while valuable in principle, might not be sufficient to address the structural inequalities in global vaccine manufacturing capacity.
Legacy and Lessons
C-TAP's early years revealed both the potential and the limitations of voluntary technology sharing mechanisms during public health emergencies. The initiative demonstrated that political will and institutional infrastructure for equitable technology transfer could be mobilised rapidly, but also that voluntary mechanisms alone are insufficient when commercial incentives and national interests diverge from global equity goals.
The experience of C-TAP would inform subsequent policy debates, including the proposed TRIPS waiver for COVID-19 vaccines at the World Trade Organization and, ultimately, the design of WHO's successor mechanism—the Health Technology Access Pool (HTAP), launched in January 2024 with a broader scope and structural improvements informed by C-TAP's operational experience.
Sources
- World Health Organization, "COVID-19 Technology Access Pool," who.int/initiatives/covid-19-technology-access-pool
- WHO and MPP joint news release, "WHO and MPP announce the first transparent, global, non-exclusive licence for a COVID-19 technology," 23 November 2021
- WHO, "C-TAP: A concept paper," October 2020
- WHO, "C-TAP: Enhancing global manufacturing capacity to address today's and tomorrow's pandemics," January 2021
- People's Health Movement, analysis of C-TAP and HTAP succession
- WIPO, "Intellectual Property and Technology Transfer for COVID-19 Vaccines: Assessment of the Record," 2023
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