A two-week lockdown that halted the globe turned into a two-year healthcare campaign against a rampant virus. A pandemic that inadvertently reshaped online work meetings, dating apps, delivery services, and most critically, novel pharmaceutical drugs. At the culmination of the COVID-19 pandemic, several pharmaceutical titans stepped up to provide mRNA vaccines to curb the spread of the now-infamous, virulent disease. Amid the overwhelming influx of patients into the ICU, the public did not stop to ask: where did this technology even come from? The world simply valued a semblance of normalcy, and in an unprecedented era of struggle, the vaccines provided a way out.
It was a grand feat in modern medical history, and a lot of bureaucratic steps were expedited to meet the demands of the world population. Once those demands were met, many pharmaceutical giants started pointing fingers at each other. Moderna pointed its finger at Pfizer/BioNTech, while they pointed theirs right back at Moderna. Arbutus Biopharma and Genevant Sciences also had something to say about Moderna's vaccine and its novelty. At first, it may seem as though determining novelty would be elementary — Company A produced the drug in one manner, did Company B do the same thing?
Yet, patent law has a way of making the process of determining infringement convoluted. Not by any fault of the law itself, but by the complexity of the technology and its many components: lipid nanoparticles, mRNA sequencing, route of administration, immune system evasion, spike protein efficacy, long-term effectiveness, and a multitude of other factors. For instance, Moderna sued Pfizer/BioNTech for allegedly copying mRNA chemical modifications that boosted immune system evasion and spike protein related functions. Arbutus claimed that their lipid nanoparticle technology, which encapsulates mRNA, was used to improve the efficacy of the intramuscular vaccinations.
Settlements have been reached, while other cases remain ongoing; however, the COVID-19 pandemic exposed how urgency has a way of postponing questions that peacetime cannot avoid. It is possible, though not something the record can confirm outright, that the crisis itself created a kind of practical truce. There was little appetite anywhere to slow that momentum down with an ownership fight.
What is easier to observe is the after-effect once that urgency faded. By March 2026, Moderna had settled with Arbutus and Genevant for up to $2.25 billion. Less than 12 months prior, Moderna’s attention had appeared to have shifted to the next generation of COVID shots including mNEXSPIKE and a broader pipeline aimed at other infectious diseases. One interpretation is that once the immediate crisis passed, these companies started treating mRNA as more than a one-time emergency tool, and more as a long-term technology platform worth clarifying ownership over. Any resolved patent questions could complicate every future product built on the same underlying science.
In some ways, patentability is not only a legal test, but a timing problem. The same technology can be urgently necessary and legally ambiguous at the same time. It isn't until the parties involved can see far enough ahead to worry about what comes next that they finally address that ambiguity, in a calmer moment.
An alternative point is the vaccine was never really “invented” by any one company. If anything, it was assembled. Can it be justified to wage war over ownership when the foundational technologies were synthesized and formed for other purposes? The lipid nanoparticle delivery system was built originally for an unrelated rare-disease drug. The chemistry that let synthetic mRNA evade the immune system came from academic researchers at the University of Pennsylvania. The spike protein design came from years of NIH-backed research meant to stabilize a different virus altogether. None of these efforts set out to build a COVID-19 vaccine. They converged once the pandemic made it all necessary at once. Is the strain of coordinating and licensing all of these creations to meet an emergency enough justification to bypass the particulars of patent law?
Maybe both readings are true at once. The technology was assembled from parts nobody built with each other in mind, and the ownership questions still had to be worked out eventually, since someone has to be accountable for what gets used and how. The companies asked the ownership question later, once the pressure was off and there was room to ask it. Whether that makes the disputes justified or just inevitable is hard to say. Patent law certainly didn't “catch up” to the vaccines until the emergency was already over, it is always prevalent and available. By then the more interesting question wasn't really who invented what anymore. It was what these companies planned to build next, and whether sorting out ownership now is less about settling the past and more about protecting whatever comes next.
Disclaimer: This post was prepared by law students at WIPILC. The information provided is for informational purposes alone, shall not be interpreted as legal advice, and is not intended to provide advice or recommendations.