New York/Washington — Moderna has said it won’t enforce its patents related to Covid-19 vaccines during the pandemic, in an effort to not deter other companies and researchers from making similar shots.
One of the front-runners in developing a Covid-19 vaccine, Moderna decided to make the declaration because investors had started noticing that the company has patents that might apply to other coronavirus vaccines, said Stephen Hoge, Moderna’s president, in an interview. Numerous researchers and companies, including giants such as Pfizer, are pursuing vaccines based on messenger RNA , the technology for which Moderna has become well-known. Moderna said it is open to licensing its patents for use in Covid-19 vaccines after the pandemic ends.
Darpa’s funding accounts for a very small part of Moderna’s overall financial backing, Hoge said. “We always tried to make sure that we identified them not just on patent filings but more broadly. The statement that we haven’t done it as a blanket statement is factually not true.”