Well, of course we do not know answers to these questions as these issues were and are a part of commercial negotiations and agreements. Why Oxford did what they did and what were their motivations and incentives is up to them to explain and to us to accept, however strange it might seem to us. We are not a party to that deal.
But logic of exclusivity is very understandable to me (I deal with these things regularly). When a buyer or a business partner takes significant risks in the deal and/or is asked to make further big investments to make it work, it’s a fairly normal practice to request exclusivity in some form. After all, in civil law, that’s what for instance marriage is too. Where I am, this is a normal business condition.
I think what’s important here is to realize what Bill Gates said in that interview: we shall see that AstraZeneca stepped up and went into this deal and hundreds of other pharma companies did not dare to do the same. So we might criticize AZ as much as we want, yet they deserve credit for making significant investments on their own and deliver for all of us. The alternative for them was to simply do nothing.
