Moderna Delays Vaccine Patent Due to Dispute with US Government

Moderna Inc. said he delayed the issuance of his patent vaccine COVID with the intention of allowing negotiations with its partners in the Government of U.S on who should be listed as inventors.

For its part, the US government is opposed to Moderna listing only scientists from the company, and not those from the National Institutes of Health (NIH) Vaccine Research Center, as inventors in the patent application. Moderna recognized the NIH scientists as “collaborators,” but in a July filing with the US Patent and Trademark Office, it said it had made a “good faith determination that these individuals did not jointly invent the MRNA and the claimed mRNA compositions “in the specific application.

The patent office had said the application could be approved, but the company never paid the fee for the patent to be issued before the deadline and it was labeled abandoned. Instead, Moderna filed a new related application that gives it time to negotiate with the NIH.

“Moderna has taken this step to allow more time for discussions with the NIH to develop,” the company said in a statement. While the company believes its scientists invented the mRNA sequence at the heart of the patent, it acknowledged that “the NIH believes just as strongly that its scientists should be listed as co-inventors.”