In new financial filings, Moderna admitted that it may not have exclusive rights to the technology it's using to develop its mRNA coronavirus vaccine.
In a quarterly statement, Moderna said that the company “cannot be certain that we were the first to make the inventions claimed in our patents or pending patent applications.” For this reason, Moderna said that the company may be unable to secure desired patent rights.
Instead, it appears the patent might be jointly owned by Moderna and the National Institutes of Health, which is co-developing the vaccine and has filed a provisional patent application tied to the vaccine.
The admission of the company’s lack of patent rights was included in a regulatory filing in a section where Moderna was asked to list risks to its business.
Read the full Reuters report.