Senator Durbin has written letters to vaccine manufacturers Moderna, AstraZeneca, Sanofi, GlaxoSmithKline, Merck, Pfizer, Novavax, and Janssen/Johnson & Johnson, asking eight detailed questions.
Question 8 asked about federal funding of the vaccine, government rights in patents, and the by Bayh-Dole obligation to make the benefit of the invention “available to the public on reasonable terms.”
Link to letters here.
8. Has federal funding contributed to the discovery, research, development, or production scaling of your vaccine candidate? If so, please provide a list of all such federal funding disaggregated by the specific patent and/or stage of the vaccine development process.
a. If any patent related to your vaccine candidate is held by the federal government, please list the patent(s) and provide a copy of the licensing agreement.
b. If any patent related to your vaccine candidate is held by the federal government, please explain how your company plans to make the benefit of the invention “available to the public on reasonable terms,” as required by 35 USC 201.