Covid-19 virus outbreak and had spread out all over the world since January 2020. To fight against this pandemic, there are a lot of pharmaceutical enterprises take part in the race of vaccine product, giant Moderna pharmaceutical company is one of the fast evolved researchers and release billion doses to public. A huge venture and benefit for American pharmaceutical company and billion doses had contributed to many countries in the world. When Moderna started to fill patent right and immediately got some dispute with NIH.
This is controversial patent dispute involve co-operation between private and government sector(NIH). Covid-19 vaccine research project had combined coherently private company and government to boots the process rapidly. Moderna has abandoned a patent application for a key part of its Covid-19 vaccine amid a dispute with the National Institutes of Health(NIH) over who should be credited among the inventors, deferring a possible court battle between the company and the government.
In 2020, Moderna filed to patent a genetic sequence used in its vaccine to trigger an immune response against the coronavirus. Though Moderna described the NIH as “collaborators” in developing the vaccine, only Moderna scientists were listed as inventors in the 2020 application.
The NIH required Moderna to add the names of three government researchers to its application, sparking a public dispute over which researchers developed the genetic sequence. Having NIH scientists listed as inventors could allow the NIH to collect royalty fee from the billions of dollars in sales of the vaccine and to license the patent to vaccine manufacturers in countries where vaccine access is low.
After missing a November 29 fee deadline, Moderna abandoned its application and filed a new application that could allow the patent to be issued at a later date, the company said.
The delay will allow more time for discussions between Moderna and the NIH, the company announced. Then, Moderna is renouncing the patent on its coronavirus vaccine in 92 low- and middle-income countries.
