The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit on Dec. 1 upheld an administrative board’s decision that two vaccine technology patents owned by a subsidiary of Canadian drugmaker Arbutus Biopharma were valid.
The decision means Arbutus could sue Moderna and request royalties for its COVID-19 vaccine, which uses a similar vaccine delivery technology as the one covered under the patents.
A Moderna spokesperson told Becker’s it disagrees with the court’s decision and does not believe its vaccine falls under Arbutus’ patents.
“Moderna is a pioneer of mRNA-based vaccines, and we have developed our own proprietary [lipid nanoparticle]-delivery technology,” the spokesperson said.
Moderna is also facing a separate dispute with the National Institutes of Health regarding whether federal scientists should have been listed as co-inventors of Moderna’s COVID-19 shot in a patent application.
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