Moderna pledges to not enforce COVID-19 patents in 92 states
Moderna has stated that it will “never” enforce its COVID-19 patents in 92 low and middle-income countries.
The pharma giant assured yesterday that it would not enforce the patents in the 92 member states of the Gavi COVAX Advance Market Commitment (AMC), on the condition that the vaccines are used solely within their respective countries.
For non-AMC countries, Moderna says that companies using Moderna-patented technologies should still “respect the company’s IP”, suggesting that the pledge to not enforce only applies to AMC members.
Moderna also reinforces that it is willing to license its technology for COVID-19 vaccines to manufacturers in these countries on “commercially reasonable terms”.
Stéphane Bancel, CEO of Moderna said: "We are committed to defeating the pandemic across the globe, and we are fulfilling that through our pledge not to enforce our COVID-19-related patents in low-and middle-income countries but also through our delivery of the most vaccine doses to COVAX at the lowest price per dose.”
Alongside this, Moderna also announced that it was upping its mRNA manufacturing capability in Kenya. It plans to invest $500 million to build a state-of-the-art mRNA facility, with the goal of producing up to 500 million doses of vaccines each year.
Bancel continues: "We have taken significant steps to increase supply and broaden global access and scaling up our capacity enabling us to make billions of doses of our vaccine each year. Our pledge further highlights our commitment to global access.
“I'm so proud of what our team of 3,000 employees has accomplished since the pandemic began. We are dedicated to combatting COVID-19 globally and preparing for the next pandemic."
COVAX candidate
This announcement comes shortly after Afrigen Biologics revealed that it had manufactured its own COVID-19 vaccine using publicly available data relating to Moderna’s treatment.
While Moderna initially refused to share its recipe with Afrigen, citing IP concerns, Afrigen managed to create its own vaccine using the data and help from advisers. This vaccine candidate represents the first COVID-19 vaccine to be developed without the assistance and approval of the original manufacturer.
"We haven't copied Moderna, we've developed our own processes because Moderna didn't give us any technology," Petro Terblanche, managing director at Afrigen, told Reuters.
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