COVID-19 Vaccine Patent Dispute With Moderna US NIH Confirms Scientists Help Design Genetic Sequence

JAKARTA - United States National Institutes of Health (NIH) scientists played a 'leading role' in developing Moderna's COVID-19 vaccine, with the agency intending to defend its claim as a patent owner, NIH Director Dr. Francis Collins told Reuters on Wednesday.

In a story first reported by the New York Times on Tuesday, Moderna excluded three NIH scientists as co-inventors of the central patent for the company's multibillion-dollar COVID-19 vaccine in its July application.

"I think Moderna has made a serious mistake here by not giving the kind of co-inventorship credit to the people who played a major role in the development of the vaccine that they now make quite a lot of," Collins said, in an interview ahead of the Reuters Total Health conference, which will take place virtually from November 15-18, as quoted November 11.

Moderna expects sales in 2021 of USD 15 billion to USD 18 billion from the COVID-19 vaccine, its first and only commercial product, and up to USD 22 billion next year.

In a statement emailed to Reuters, Moderna acknowledged scientists at the NIH's National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID) played an "important role" in developing Moderna's mRNA vaccine, but the company said it disagreed with the agency's patent claim.

Collins said the NIH had been trying to resolve the patent conflict with Moderna amicably for some time and had failed.

"But we're not done yet. Obviously, this is something the legal authorities have to look for."

The NIH has confirmed that its three scientists, Dr. John Mascola, Dr. Barney Graham, and Dr. Kizzmekia Corbett, helped design the genetic sequence used in Moderna's COVID-19 vaccine and must be named on the patent application. Graham has retired and Corbett now works at Harvard.

"It's not a good idea to file for a patent when you leave an important inventor behind, and so it's going to get sorted as people look harder at this," Collins told Reuters.

"I didn't expect it to be the result of what was a very friendly collaborative effort between scientists at the NIH and Moderna over the years."

In a statement, Moderna said, "We do not agree that the NIAID scientists created the claim on the mRNA-1273 sequence itself. Only Moderna scientists came up with the mRNA sequence used in our vaccine."

Moderna says the company has recognized NIH scientists in other patent applications, such as those related to dosage. But for core patents, Moderna is only required to register Moderna scientists as sequence inventors under the strict rules of the United States Patent Act, he explained.

"We are grateful for our collaboration with the NIH scientists, appreciate their contributions, and remain focused on working together to help patients," the company added.