Judge of­fers ear­ly win for Ar­bu­tus as Mod­er­na vac­cine patent spat heats up

A Delaware fed­er­al judge has sided with Ar­bu­tus’ in­ter­pre­ta­tion of three patent claim terms in its case against Mod­er­na, giv­ing the biotech a small win in a drawn-out patent dis­pute.

Ar­bu­tus and Genevant filed suit against Mod­er­na in 2022, al­leg­ing the com­pa­ny’s his­toric mR­NA vac­cine used lipid nanopar­ti­cle (LNP) tech­nol­o­gy de­vel­oped and patent­ed by Ar­bu­tus. While plain­tiffs agreed that the Covid-19 pan­dem­ic would have been “im­mea­sur­ably worse” with­out the wide­spread avail­abil­i­ty of Mod­er­na’s vac­cine, they ar­gued that the achieve­ment was made pos­si­ble by Ar­bu­tus’ dis­cov­er­ies around LNPs.

Unlock this article instantly by becoming a free subscriber.

You’ll get access to free articles each month, plus you can customize what newsletters get delivered to your inbox each week, including breaking news.

SIGN UP LOG IN BECOME A PREMIUM SUBSCRIBER