U.S. Government Received $400 Million in COVID-19 Vaccine Royalty Payments: Moderna

Moderna On February 23, it announced that it reached a patent deal with the U.S. government regarding disputed technology. COVID-19 vaccine.

In December 2022, Moderna entered “a nonexclusive patent license agreement” with the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID), said CFO Jamey Mock during an earnings call on Thursday.

The agreement allows the company to use “certain patent rights concerning stabilizing prefusion coronavirus spike proteins and the resulting stabilized proteins for the use in COVID-19 vaccine products,” Mock said.

Moderna was required to send a document under the agreement. “catch-up payment” Moderna executives estimate that the NIAID received $400 million before the new year.

“We have agreed to pay low single-digit royalties on future net sales of our COVID-19 vaccines,” Mock said.

NIAID, and its parent agency, U.S. National Institutes of Health (NIH) did not respond to our requests for comment.

The Epoch Times filed a Freedom of Information Act Request for the agreement.

Dr. Anthony Fauci retired in 2022, but NIAID was helmed for decades.

This means that the government was paid very shortly before this disclosure. Telling a court Moderna should be sued for patent infringement, and it should.

NIH Claims Patent Was Not Correctly Removed

Officials claim that U.S. government researchers missed a patent filing regarding a key sequence in the vaccine.

Moderna and the NIH worked together for four years to develop vaccines against diseases. This was before the pandemic. Moderna and the NIH collaborated to develop COVID-19, both parties claim.

However, the messenger RNA sequence “was selected exclusively by Moderna scientists using Moderna’s technology and without input of NIAID scientists, who were not even aware of the mRNA sequence until after the patent application had already been filed,” Moderna stated it all in one sentence.

Moderna and the NIH were in negotiations over the matter, when Moderna stated in a patent application It is. “reached a good-faith determination” The sequence of messenger RNA was not invented by government scientists.

According to The Epoch Times, a NIH review concluded that John Mascola, Barney Graham, Kizzmekia and Kizzmekia were co-inventors of the sequence. A government official familiar with the situation previously told The Epoch Times that the doctors had all worked with Moderna during their time at the NIH.

“The work of Dr. Barney Graham and Kizzmekia Corbett and others stabilized the prefusion spike protein which is used in virtually all, with few exceptions, of the vaccines that are now successful,” Fauci testified at one congressional hearing.

Scientists were identified on several patents related to each other, but not the sequence number.

Moderna changed its position in December 2021. It announced it was discontinuing its pursuit of the sequence Patent, at most temporarily.

“Moderna has taken this action to allow more time for discussions with the NIH. Moderna believes that its scientists invented the specific mRNA sequence at the heart of the patent in question. The company acknowledges that NIH feels equally strongly that its scientists should be listed as co-inventors for their contemporaneous work on the protein sequence,” Moderna spoke at the time.

“Moderna decided that issuance of the mRNA sequence patent in the current environment could interfere with further discussions aimed at an amicable resolution with the NIH. Further, the company would like to avoid any distraction to the important public-private efforts ongoing to address emerging SARS-CoV-2 variants, including Omicron. Moderna continues to be grateful to the NIH and its scientists for their substantial contributions to developing the Moderna COVID-19 vaccine,” It was also added.

The U.S. government approved the vaccine in December 2020. Later, a biologics license was granted. It spent $10 billion on the development of the vaccine, and another $9 billion on the production of the vaccine.

Royalty payments

According to the Government Accountability Office, research at the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services resulted in more than 4,400 U.S. Patents between 1980 and 2019.

The NIH accounted for 2 percent in patents. During that same time period, these patents generated up $2 billion in royalty income.

“The NIH provides limited information to the public about its licensing activities. For example, the agency does not report which of its patents are licensed or release metrics that would enable the public to evaluate how licensing affects patient access to resulting drugs,” The office closed. “Increasing the transparency of its licensing activities could improve the public’s and policymakers’ understanding of NIH’s management of its intellectual property.”

Fauci is one of the recipients.

Open the Books, a non-profit watchdog Obtained documentation From fiscal year 2010 through fiscal year 2020, Fauci and other government scientists will receive approximately $350,000,000 in royalties

Dr. Lawrence Tabak is the acting director of NIH.https://www.theepochtimes.com/acting-nih-director-admits-appearance-of-conflict-of-interest-in-secret-royalty-payments-to-fauci-scientists_4460259.html”>acknowledged Present payments “an appearance of a conflict of interest,” However, they claim that they are. “substantial and significant” Firewalls can be used to mitigate the problem.