Mod­er­na dis­putes NIH claims on Covid-19 vac­cine patents, says it of­fered to make gov­ern­ment co-own­ers

Mod­er­na on Thurs­day af­ter­noon is­sued a quick re­but­tal to re­cent NIH claims on its Covid-19 vac­cine patents, say­ing that the mR­NA se­quence for the vac­cine was “se­lect­ed ex­clu­sive­ly by Mod­er­na sci­en­tists us­ing Mod­er­na’s tech­nol­o­gy” and with­out in­put of three NIH sci­en­tists. The com­pa­ny al­so said that it at­tempt­ed to name NIH as co-own­ers on the patent in Sep­tem­ber.

“For those who would seek to twist Mod­er­na’s good faith ap­pli­ca­tion of U.S. patent law in­to some­thing else, noth­ing could be fur­ther from the truth. Mod­er­na re­mains the on­ly com­pa­ny to have pledged not to en­force its COVID-19 in­tel­lec­tu­al prop­er­ty dur­ing the pan­dem­ic,” the com­pa­ny said in a state­ment. NIH did not im­me­di­ate­ly re­spond to a re­quest for com­ment.

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