Abolish patent rights. Grant IP waivers. Open COVID-19 intellectual property. The development of COVID-19 vaccines has elicited very real fears of unequal access—and with it, a growing call to waive intellectual property enforcement for these lifesaving drugs. However, while legal mechanisms like compulsory licensing hold some promise in addressing these concerns, these proposals oversimplify and ignore crucial non-IP challenges to the effective delivery of COVID-19 vaccines, such as infrastructure disparities and lack of a fully functioning public health system.