Could a patent rul­ing threat­en Mod­er­na’s Covid-19 vac­cine?

Up­date: Mod­er­na re­leased an up­dat­ed state­ment Fri­day af­ter­noon say­ing that the LNPs used in its Covid-19 vac­cine, mR­NA-1273,  are not part of the dis­put­ed in­tel­lec­tu­al prop­er­ty. “Mod­er­na is not aware of any sig­nif­i­cant in­tel­lec­tu­al prop­er­ty im­ped­i­ments for any prod­ucts we in­tend to com­mer­cial­ize, in­clud­ing mR­NA-1273,” they said. 

For years, Mod­er­na has been bat­tling a tiny Penn­syl­va­nia biotech over patents for a tech­nol­o­gy re­quired to de­liv­er its mR­NA drugs and vac­cines. Yes­ter­day, a rul­ing came down at what might be the most in­op­por­tune time for Mod­er­na, po­ten­tial­ly de­lay­ing their Covid-19 vac­cine or cut­ting in­to the po­ten­tial prof­its that quin­tu­pled their stock in less than 5 months.

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