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Moderna vs the NIH & the Spikevax Patent Battle! – Ep. 38 [Podcast]
- Ray Guarnieri
- November 15, 2021
- 12:00 pm
Table of Contents
Moderna vs the NIH & the Spikevax Patent Battle! – Ep. 38 [Podcast]
Summary:
In this episode of Stuff You Should Know About IP, Thomas Colson and Raymond Guarnieri discuss a dispute regarding COVID-19 vaccine inventorship between the National Institute of Health (NIH) and Moderna. The NIH and the Biomedical Advanced Research and Development Authority (BARDA) invested in Moderna. Moderna has filed three patent applications, two of which relate directly to the mRNA-1273 sequence, and one of which is for a method of using the mRNA-1273 sequence. Moderna listed one or more inventors from the NIH on the patent application for the method of using the mRNA-1273 sequence, but did not list anyone from the NIH as an inventor on the other two patent applications. The NIH alleges that someone from the NIH should have been listed as an inventor on those other applications. In the United States, patent ownership flows from inventorship. Patent ownership can be transferred to a non-inventor by means of an assignment agreement. When parties collaborate on a project, Tom Colson advocates for having agreements that define intellectual property rights in advance. To be a named inventor on a patent application, a party must have made an inventive contribution to at least one of the application’s claims. Moderna only has one product currently on the market: its COVID-19 vaccine. Intentionally omitting an inventor’s name from a patent application can constitute fraud on the Patent Office, and that can result in losing the patent. If an inventor’s name is negligently omitted by mistake, however, then the negligent party can usually pay a fee to have the mistake corrected. Patent owners can exploit their ownership rights by, for example, providing licenses to other parties. Tom Colson argues that co-ownership of a patent is less valuable than exclusive ownership. After the America Invents Act, the United States changed from a first-to-invent system (in which whoever invents something first may patent it) to a first-to-file system (in which whoever files a patent application first is entitled to the patent).
References
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moderna
Transcript:
Raymond Guarnie…: Biotech giant, Moderna, squares off with the National Institute of Health in a surprisingly public battle over inventorship of the Moderna “Spikevax” COVID-19 vaccine. Today, we’re going to dive in to fairness and morality at the molecular level. This is Stuff You Should Know About IP. Today’s episode of Stuff You Should Know About IP is brought to you by the Patent Lawyer Magazine. If you want to stay up to date with everything that’s going on in the world of IP and patents, go to www.patentlawyermagazine.com. Each issue is free to read up to eight weeks. That’s patentlawyermagazine.com for global news in the world of patents. All right, Tom, who’s right, the NIH or Moderna? Can you just-
Thomas Colson: Oh, great.
Raymond Guarnie…: … opinion for us now, and then we could just-
Thomas Colson: Yeah, just get it over with. Then we can turn it off, right?
Raymond Guarnie…: Right. Yeah. No reason to listen to us talk for 20 minutes.
Thomas Colson: Yeah, we had to do this podcast today. I originally wanted to do one on publicity rights with all these videos on YouTube that go viral. We’ll have to save that for next time because this is just too timely.
Raymond Guarnie…: Oh, I like it. You’re plugging the next episode.
Thomas Colson: Exactly. Exactly.
Raymond Guarnie…: That’s smart.
Thomas Colson: Exactly. Anyway, so Moderna and the NIH. So just I’ll give you a quick background on who these players are. NIH is part of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, and the Department of Health and Human Services has the NIH. They also have something called BARDA, B-A-R-D-A, which is the Biomedical Advanced Research and Development Authority. And then, the NIH basically has the National Institute of Allergies, and let’s see…
Raymond Guarnie…: Infectious Diseases?
Thomas Colson: Yes, infectious disease. Good. I like that. And then, the National Center for Advancing Transitional Services. So the NIH and BARDA have both invested in Moderna to get their vaccines going. Back up though because Moderna started out of Harvard with a Harvard assistant professor in 2005, and then they got a bunch of private investment and then they grew and grew and grew. And then ultimately, they went public in 2018 and I think it was, what was it, the largest biomedical IPO, I think, in history or maybe the largest vaccine.
Raymond Guarnie…: It was the largest IPO, I think, that said for a company that hadn’t brought a product to market yet.
Thomas Colson: Yeah, because their only product to market is the COVID-19 vaccine, right?
Raymond Guarnie…: Yeah. Crazy.
Thomas Colson: But they go public and they get like $621 million. They’re just cruising before COVID. Then, COVID hits, they get investment from the… And by the way, they’ve been working with the NIH anyway. So the NIH is definitely involved with Moderna and they’re investing. But the big question is Moderna files three patent applications and two of them relate directly to the mRNA-1273 sequence, one of them is for a method of using the mRNA-1273 sequence. And by the way, I’m saying the whole thing out. I’m sure that people in the industry say like the 1273 or the 73 or the mRNA. I mean, I don’t know what people in the industry call it, but that’s what it is.
Raymond Guarnie…: I like Spikevax.
Thomas Colson: Or Spikevax, yeah.
Raymond Guarnie…: Spikevax sounds like it’s going to, I don’t know, spike it like you’re going spike a football.
Thomas Colson: Yeah, because you’ve got a big victory.
Raymond Guarnie…: You’re going to spike the virus right out of your body.
Thomas Colson: Yeah. But anyway, so the question is… So Moderna files these patent applications. They list one or more inventors from the NIH on their method of using the 1273 sequence, but they do not list them on the patents that directly relate to the mRNA-1273 sequence. So NIH is coming back and the public is coming back, by the way, and saying, “This is wrong. They should have been listed on those patents.” So what got us talking about this is initially, I read that an article in the New York Times about this dispute, and I just want to go through some of the stuff from it, okay?
So basically, there’s a spokeswoman from the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, which is part of the NIH. Her name is Kathy Stover and she says, “Omitting NIH inventors from the principal patent application deprives NIH of a co-ownership interest in that application and the patent that will eventually issue from it.” So that’s the first thing I want to address is, let’s keep in mind, it is correct that ownership of a patent in the U.S., in particular, flows from inventorship. So if you are the inventor and there is no contract that says otherwise you are an owner of the patent. So let’s say there’s five inventors, all five inventors are owners and all five inventors have the opportunity, the right to exploit their ownership interest by licensing the patent by basically all the owners can license the patent. So the big issue is while the federal government, the U.S. government via the NIH, they claim they should have co-ownership rights so that they could license it out to manufacturing facilities throughout the world to spread this vaccine farther.
And by the way, we did do a video or we did a podcast on this now that I think about it. We did do a podcast on patent rights associated with the COVID vaccines across the board, not just Moderna. So anyway, the thing that she’s incorrect about here is omitting the NIH inventors from the principal patent does not necessarily deprive the NIH of co-ownership because you can have a contract, right? I mean, unless I’m missing something, when this agreement started, when they first started investing in Moderna, you would think there’d be a joint development agreement in place or a contract of some sort that assigns ownership interest, right?
Raymond Guarnie…: I’m pretty sure that the NIH didn’t give Moderna $460 billion on a word-of-mouth agreement.
Thomas Colson: Yeah, million. Right? Did you say million or billion?
Raymond Guarnie…: Was it million or was it billion?
Thomas Colson: No, no. They’ve invested a total like…
Raymond Guarnie…: Oh, yeah. Did I say billion?
Thomas Colson: Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Raymond Guarnie…: No, yeah, that would be a bit much.
Thomas Colson: Yeah, that would be. I guess they develop a few billion all together in the investments. And then there was pre-purchases because apparently the government spent like another $8 billion to buy doses which, by the way, everybody wanted these doses, right?
Raymond Guarnie…: Right.
Thomas Colson: But the U.S. made an advanced purchase, I guess, of like $8 billion.
Raymond Guarnie…: Right. But they had to have had some kind of agreement in place.
Thomas Colson: Yeah. That’s the thing is that when you’re getting started, right, when you’re starting a relationship, and you and I talk about this all the time, when you’re starting a relationship, that’s when you put your agreement in place because then you have all the leverage if you have the money, because it doesn’t matter if you funded it because ownership flows from inventorship. So it doesn’t matter who paid for it, the inventors own the patent unless there’s an agreement that says otherwise, and that agreement should be put into place before you give dollar one because before you pay a company, you have all the leverage. Once you pay them, they have all the leverage, right?
Raymond Guarnie…: Right.
Thomas Colson: So if it were me… And again, maybe there’s rules about how the government can interact with private enterprises but, to me, you should always have your agreement that defines the intellectual property rights of the members of this relationship in advance. So in a way, if they didn’t do that, and maybe they did but it doesn’t seem that they did that, if they didn’t do that, then they’re really harming the U.S. taxpayers who could have had an equity interest in this vaccine.
But at the same time, there’s Moderna shareholders. They might have said no way back when the government first started deciding to invest and putting money in. If they had said, “Hey, we’ll put money in, but we want to own the intellectual property rights,” Moderna might have said, “No, we don’t want your money. In that case, we’ll go and sell advanced doses to a bunch of other countries who want to give us $8 billion or we’ll go find private investors who want to get the benefits of our success in the marketplace, but we need to own all the IP.” But at least if that discussion occurs upfront, everyone comes in with eyes wide open as to who owns what downstream, right?
Raymond Guarnie…: Right.
Thomas Colson: Yeah. So that’s the first thing I wanted to mention. But the other thing is in this article, there’s this guy, John P. Moore, a professor of Microbiology and Immunology at Cornell University. Great school, right?
Raymond Guarnie…: Yup.
Thomas Colson: So they say he called it a matter of fairness and morality at the scientific level, right? Then, he says these two institutions have been working together for four or five years. So let’s talk about fairness and morality at the scientific level. It doesn’t matter when it comes to inventorship. It’s just not relevant. You are an inventor, you are a named inventor on a patent if you can point to your inventive contribution in a claim, okay?
Raymond Guarnie…: Yeah.
Thomas Colson: If you cannot do that, you are not a named inventor even if you paid for it, even if you were the cheering section as the inventor was developing and creating it, even if you made contributions to the infrastructure around this invention. You are not an inventor unless you can point to your inventive contribution in that patent.
Raymond Guarnie…: Okay.
Thomas Colson: And then… What’s that?
Raymond Guarnie…: I have to just say this because it’s driving me nuts.
Thomas Colson: Sure.
Raymond Guarnie…: That is fair and moral.
Thomas Colson: Yeah, yeah. Right, right.
Raymond Guarnie…: It’s not that it doesn’t… I mean, you’re right. I get your point. It doesn’t matter when it comes to determining inventorship, but the concept of inventorship and the way that we agree about it is fair and moral to the people who actually invented it and to the system as a whole because if Moderna was able to just say, “All right, you want to be an inventor, go ahead. You can be an inventor,” how is that fair to the people who actually did invent it, right?
Thomas Colson: Yeah, right.
Raymond Guarnie…: It goes against everything that they worked, that person worked on and contributed. It’s the fruit of their labor.
Thomas Colson: Yeah. And inventorship might be one of the few remaining non-political decisions in the U.S., right, because if you’re talking about a published paper, if you’re the boss, if you’re the head of the department, you probably get your name on that paper if one of your associate professors writes, does the work and writes a paper because you can have the name on the paper just as like a token of appreciation for your general contributions and guidance, right, but that’s political. Inventorship on a patent is not political. It’s very scientific. It’s very factual. If you can point to your inventive contribution in the claim, you’re an inventor. If you cannot, you are not an inventor, again, no matter what you’ve contributed.
And then in this article, this other person says… Oh, there’s this guy who writes a letter, which we’ll talk about in a second, Public Citizen, it’s called. And they are angry about the fact that the NIH was not included as a named inventor. And what they’re saying is patents, in general, are bad in a pandemic. They say it’s a terrible idea to have a private corporation of a monopoly on part of a life-saving technology. Again, it’s the law that if you have something patent that’s new, not obvious, and useful, and you’re the inventor of it, you get a patent. And the reason that’s so important is because it incentivizes people to invest a lot of money in inventing stuff. And like you said at the beginning, Ray, how many products does Moderna have in the marketplace right now?
Raymond Guarnie…: One.
Thomas Colson: One.
Raymond Guarnie…: They might have something else coming or-
Thomas Colson: They have stuff in the pipeline.
Raymond Guarnie…: … recent plan that I know of one.
Thomas Colson: They’ve been in business since 2005. They have a whole bunch of investors who have put their money into Moderna. And as of November 13th, 2021, they have one product. Now, that product is killing it in the marketplace because of the pandemic, but there’s also an issue of investors. The investors started putting money into this company long before there was a pandemic and they should be rewarded for that. Now, is there some kind of a balance with respect to a pandemic? It’s not really for me to say. I’m just talking strictly about patent law and what the rights are with respect to patent law. So really, it’s not about morality in the, “Oh, you contributed, or you’ve been friends for a long time, or you really helped out a lot on the side.” It’s really very specific when it comes to inventorship.
And then, this article or this letter written to the director, let’s see, it was written to Dr. Collins of the National Institutes of Health, basically saying that the NIH should be an owner. Well, there is one of the patent applications that they are an owner of, the one on the method of using the mRNA-1273 sequence. So clearly, the patent lawyer for Moderna analyzed the inventorship situation for the three patent applications, and in one of them decided that there was an inventive contribution from somebody from the NIH and with respect to two of them said that there was not an inventive contribution from the NIH and it was just the Moderna team. That’s important, right, because patent lawyers have an ethical obligation to the Patent Office, and also there’s a thing called fraud on the Patent Office. Have you ever heard of that, Ray?
Raymond Guarnie…: I’ve heard of it.
Thomas Colson: So fraud on the Patent Office basically can occur if you intentionally leave inventors off of a patent application that you file. You could lose your patent. I mean, usually these things are corrected with a fee like, “I negligently forgot to include this person on the patent application as a named inventor. My mistake. I’ll pay the fee. We’ll add the name and we’re all good.” But if you intentionally commit fraud on the Patent Office by omitting inventors, for example, if Moderna said, “Oh my God, we don’t want to have co-ownership with the federal government because it will hurt our exclusivity and our chance to make a lot of money. So we’re going to intentionally leave the NIH inventors off,” that’s a serious thing, right? You could lose, you could have your patents invalidated over that, not to mention big fines.
But it tells me that patent lawyers… I’m a patent lawyer. I wouldn’t do that because it can harm your reputation. It can harm your license. I mean, it’s an ethical violation. And the fact that they added somebody on one of the patent applications gives credibility to the fact that they analyzed it pretty carefully and determined that they were entitled on one, but not on the other two.
And by the way, there’s two other things, Ray, that jump out at me about this situation. One of which is, so the NIH in this group that’s wrote the letter to Dr. Collins, I think it’s called the, once again, Public Citizen, it’s called. It’s a Washington, D.C. organization. They’re basically complaining and the NIH is complaining that if they are listed as patents, they are co-owners. Again, contrary to an… I mean, as long as there’s no agreement to the contrary that provides assignment rights. If you’re the inventor, you’re one of the owners. If you’re an owner, you can exploit your ownership rights. If the federal government of the U.S. is an owner, they can exploit their ownership rights by providing licenses to other nations, other manufacturers to get this out there, maybe even giving it away. That’s the danger of co-ownership, right? People think, “Oh, I want to be a co-owner. Hey, let’s just split the ownership rights. We both did this,” and whatever that is, right? If it’s a patent and you have a co-ownership right, you do not really have an exclusive right. It’s more like having a non-exclusive license.
Because if Ray and Tom co-own a patent, and I want to go into business building this out in the marketplace and make products that are protected by the patent and I want to use the patent to keep my competitors from copying the patented features and functions, but Ray has different idea. He wants to license his rights to competitors of mine so that they can pay him so that it’ll enable them to make the features and functions that are patented. All of a sudden, I totally lose the advantage of my patent, right, because I no longer can block my competitors from making, using, selling, and offering for sale patented features and functions that my customers want because Ray is a co-owner and he went out and did this license deal with them, right?
Raymond Guarnie…: Right. Yeah, the co-owners would have to agree.
Thomas Colson: Yeah. Co-ownership is a terrible idea if you have the opportunity to have exclusive ownership. Or by the way, as we know, Ray, you can carve up ownership right so you can have different exclusivity. For example, Ray, you might have the exclusivity in one industry, I have exclusivity in the other industry. That’s okay, because now I can pursue patented products in industry A, you can pursue patented products in industry B or a licensed to companies that are in industry B, right? Then, we both win. But fundamentally, patent ownership should be discussed and described upfront before money starts going in. Before you start making stuff, get together, figure out what your business goals are, and then get the intellectual property rights you need to advance your business goals, and those might be exclusive rights, not co-ownership, not exclusive rights. So that’s the one thing that jumps out of me.
Another thing that jumps out at me about this is somewhere in these articles, I don’t know if it’s true, but they claim that the NIH and Moderna had separate teams working in parallel that each independently designed the exact same sequence, right?
Raymond Guarnie…: Yeah.
Thomas Colson: That’s a really important thing because as you may know, Ray, back in like, I don’t know, years ago, I think with the America Invents Act, the U.S. went from a first-to-invent system to a first-to-file system. Under a first-to-invent system, whoever invented it first gets the patent. So whoever invented the thing and can prove that they invented it first, it doesn’t matter who files first, the first inventor gets the patent. But now, under the first-to-file system, it’s a race to the Patent Office. I mean, I imagine people in the old days running with their patent application and just slamming it on the desk at the Patent Office as somebody else who has the exact same invention is running behind them but they got tripped outside or didn’t get a cab.
But the point is, it’s a race to the Patent Office. There’s no question of inventorship or who invented first. So if two people independently invent something, they race to the Patent Office. And if it’s true that the NIH and Moderna each independently invented the exact same sequence in separate teams and Moderna got there first, it’s totally legit, right? It’s a first-to-file system that we’re in.
Raymond Guarnie…: Right. So okay, none of this really matters. I mean, it all matters, but the inventorship question of these NIH scientists doesn’t really matter depending on what the agreements they had in place are.
Thomas Colson: If they have agreements in place. But you’re absolutely right, Ray.
Raymond Guarnie…: But when it comes to ownership, I mean. Okay, but let’s just speculate. I mean, we could probably assume safely that they have some kind of agreement in place. I mean, wouldn’t it be pretty negligent on the part of the lawyers of Moderna to not have an agreement in place and accept the cash from the government at the same time?
Thomas Colson: Yeah, and there might be rules. We just took a look at this, this morning. Like I said, we-
Raymond Guarnie…: Yeah, again, the government has rules. You can’t take our money unless we have a contract.
Thomas Colson: Right. When we went to bed last night, Ray, or at least I went to bed way earlier than you because you went out with your wife, but when the night came last night, we were going to do a podcast this morning on this publicity rights around these viral videos that go on YouTube. So this morning when I got up, I thought we got to do this one. So I didn’t look deeply enough to see if there’s rules that whenever you do business with the U.S. government, by definition, by law, there’s certain IP rules but you’d think there’d be an agreement in place.
And there was a quote in the letter that was written by this person whose name is Peter Maybarduk, who is the director of Access to Medicines Program for Public Citizen. And he says, “We also request that you publish all research agreements with Moderna. We are concerned that Moderna’s decision to file for patents alone weeks after it knew its NIH partners worked on the same problem and it reached the same solution may not be consistent with the terms or the spirit of the contractual arrangement between NIH and Moderna.” So clearly, Peter Maybarduk doesn’t know if there were agreements, Tom and Ray don’t know if there were agreements, but you’d assume that any competent person entering into a relationship where there will be contributions of millions and millions, maybe early billions is going to have an agreement in place as to IP ownership.
Raymond Guarnie…: And this guy sounds like his whole job is to look into these kinds of situations. And he has a suspicion and is asking to see those agreements.
Thomas Colson: Yeah. He doesn’t know what he’s doing.
Raymond Guarnie…: Right.
Thomas Colson: Yeah. And look, if there was supposed to be agreements in place and there weren’t, you should take our executive IP training classes because we clearly-
Raymond Guarnie…: Oh, we just watched the podcast.
Thomas Colson: We have watched this podcast. Right.
Raymond Guarnie…: I mean, we talked about the importance and agreements, and IP and agreements.
Thomas Colson: Yeah. I mean, you’re jointly developing something, you think you’d have a joint development agreement in place. And JDA’s always define the foreground, the background, the post-ground, the side-ground IP associated with each deal. So it just seems like Tom and Ray and Peter Maybarduk and a whole bunch of people in the public are missing something. It just doesn’t make sense.
Raymond Guarnie…: What does this guy, Peter, mean when he says “violates the spirit of the agreement”?
Thomas Colson: He didn’t see the agreement.
Raymond Guarnie…: Okay. Right, right. But what is violating the spirit of the agreement?
Thomas Colson: I mean, in reality, agreements are defined by the words in the four corners of the document.
Raymond Guarnie…: Yeah. That’s what it means. What is the spirit of the agreement? It violates the spirit of the agreement.
Thomas Colson: Yeah, let’s see. His name is Peter Maybarduk, and I don’t see ,Esq. so I’m guessing-
Raymond Guarnie…: Oh, he’s not a lawyer.
Thomas Colson: … he’s not a lawyer because we, lawyers, often like to put that just to brag that we’re lawyers, right? Anyway, so it seems to me that this is going to be a fight, but it doesn’t seem like it’s going to be that complicated of a fight because if there’s agreements in place, they’ll define the ownership issues, and if there’s not agreements in place, it’s simply a question of determining whether the people from the NIH made inventive contributions in the claims associated with the mRNA-1273 sequence patent and whether they gave those contributions to the inventors that are named as the patent applicants, because remember they might have developed this… They claim they each invented the same thing, right? That’s what at least what this letter and this article say. There were separate teams working. They each invented the same thing.
So if you invented the same thing and you have inventive contributions but not to those claims because you did not contribute to the inventors of those patents, you’re not an inventor even if you made inventive contributions to your own thing, but you never filed. Now, I suspect that if they were named on the method of using the mRNA-1273 patent and they were involved for four or five years together, there was probably a lot of back and forth, a lot of discussions and ideas flowing. But ultimately, it’s going to come down to, can the NIH prove that they made inventive contributions to claims of the Moderna patents?
Raymond Guarnie…: It’s interesting to me as I’m thinking more about this claim that Moderna invented… They came up with the same discovery, what was the word that they used, as the NIH independently. If the NIH and Moderna are working on this project together, why would the NIH be doing anything independently of what they’re doing with Moderna? It just seems that NIH isn’t a company like Moderna. It’s a public execution. So they should be playing only a support role to-
Thomas Colson: Right. I could see why Moderna would have their own people working on it independently because they’re a company. But if the NIH is supporting the company, you’d think that they would overlap. It’s like a Venn diagram, right? You’d overlap. Oh no, not even. It’s like they’re fully contained within. There’s not an overlap. The circle is Moderna, and there’s a circle inside that is the NIH. That’s what you think, unless maybe the NIH is doing their own research trying to come up with a cure which, by the way, is not a bad idea because these pandemics are probably just going to keep coming. We’ve had like-
Raymond Guarnie…: I think I’ve seen that before where because you see, if you ever come across the conspiracy theory, people, when it comes to like government ownership of vaccines and technology like this, one of the things that they point at is, “Well, why would the government have a patent on technology like this?” I mean, I’m sure there’s a reasonable explanation for why the NIH or Anthony Fauci would be named as an inventor on a patent for something vaccine-related. But one of the things that they point at is the fact that the government would have inventorship or ownership rights over this kind of technology. I’m almost certain that they do, but I don’t know if that’s by way of relationships like the one we’re talking about today between the NIH and Moderna, but they almost certainly have their own independent projects that they’re working on. I know I’ve seen that before.
Thomas Colson: Yeah. And here’s another funny thing. So let’s say that the NIH prevails and these NIH inventors become co-inventors of this patent, I mean, this seems like it’s not probably a situation of fraud on the Patent Office because Moderna seems to have a legitimate argument as to why they’re not inventors. Even if they’re determined to be wrong, they have a legitimate good faith basis for it probably. But let’s say that they prevail and these NIH inventors become the owners, unless they have an agreement with the NIH that they have to assign their rights, then they would be the owners. Now, they’re individual people, right? Now, I’m guessing again, it just would be insane to think that there are not agreements in place with all these people, but they’re fighting to get the inventors on the patent which would make them the owners.
Raymond Guarnie…: Well, but they must have an agreement with the NIH.
Thomas Colson: That’s what I’m saying. They must have assignment agreements. I know they must have assignment agreements in place.
Raymond Guarnie…: Yeah. I mean, if I have an agreement in place with executive IP-
Thomas Colson: With me? Yeah, with executive IP. Exactly. Yeah.
Raymond Guarnie…: … and CLG that says anything that I create and the all the scope of my work is owned by the company, I’m pretty sure the NIH has that in their employment agreements in their contract.
Thomas Colson: Yeah. Right, right. I’m sure they have armies of lawyers and they’ve been around a long time. But that’s why it just seems funny that this stuff isn’t all buttoned up in an agreement in advance. Now, maybe one of our many millions of subscribers that are watching this video can chime in and say, “No, there’s this rule 8516(b) that says this.”
Raymond Guarnie…: You have to spit in their hand and shake.
Thomas Colson: Right. Yeah, yeah. That’s good enough. Yeah, yeah. Yeah. We’re just going to go. Yeah, my word is oke. Anyway, so definitely this is an interesting fight that I’m looking forward to following and finding out who wins in the battle of the, what’d you call it, the Spikevax.
Raymond Guarnie…: The Spikevax, yeah.
Thomas Colson: Spikevax.
Raymond Guarnie…: Thanks everyone for listening. If you found this conversation interesting and you like learning stuff about IP, make sure you comment, like, share, send this in an email, post it on your LinkedIn, Facebook, Twitter, and we’ll see you next time.
Thomas Colson: See you.
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Moderna vs the NIH & the Spikevax Patent Battle! – Ep. 38 [Podcast]