Moderna and Pfizer: Cat Fight

Commentary

The legend says that patents can be a reward for inventions. They are grants by the government of monopoly privilege to industrial interests. This was originally a royal right left from feudal times. It has now become a legal right for anyone to use the power of state to stop competitors and exercise monopoly pricing power.

For centuries patents were debated for their economic and social merit. It is undisputed that they hinder competition. Reverse engineers do not have the rights to create and sell products. It is not clear if such intervention are necessary in order to encourage innovation.

In the case of pharmaceuticals the reason is slightly different. The argument revolved around the need to pay for the excessive costs of regulatory compliance and research. Compensation is necessary to ensure that the entire industry does not become unprofitable, and all of us suffer from a shortage in medical advancements.

None of these applies to the COVID shots. Moderna received fast-track regulatory approval and $10 billion in tax subsidies for its mRNA innovation. It claimed that it had the rights to all formulas. It agreed to give up its rights during the pandemic, when it also used governments and the private sector to force consumers to buy its products.

Now, with the pandemic over and demand dropping around the world and mandates to stop vaccines being implemented, Moderns has filed a lawsuit against Pfizer alleging that it stole its intellectual property. They will probably settle the case and distribute their money after a long court battle.

Both are public-traded companies that have made huge profits from the pandemic. However, the jury is still out as to whether or not their products had a net effect on reducing the severity of the disease. The product did not prevent or slow down the spread of disease.

To top it off, both companies are granted complete legal indemnification from damages from the shot, according to 42 U.S. Code SS 300aa-22. “No vaccine manufacturer,” says the law, “shall be liable in a civil action for damages arising from a vaccine-related injury or death associated with the administration of a vaccine after October 1, 1988, if the injury or death resulted from side effects that were unavoidable even though the vaccine was properly prepared and was accompanied by proper directions and warnings.”

This privilege is an additional one that they have, and it’s based on the fact that no vaccine manufacturer company can afford to pay for the costs of litigation as well as the research and development expenses.

It’s impossible that an industry would be allowed more legal privileges. Many of these privileges are quite new legal terms. Boldrin and Levine have demonstrated that the claims to support this kind of privilege are false in theory, false in history, and false in the current moment.

Without the patent privilege, without large subsidies and without indemnification for damages claims, there wouldn’t have been any incentive to sell a product that was effective. Operation Warp Speed was the Government’s decision that a COVID vaccine must be available. This was the only way to escape. This led to huge distortions in the price and effectiveness of this strategy.

Some people anticipated this inevitable mess right from the start. The formula should at least have been made available to all so that the vaccine could be produced and distributed cost-effectively and in an open manner. The shot would have been available to those who requested it. We could then continue our lives and trust the immune system, which hundreds of years worth of scientific research has helped us understand.

Now, after so much chaos in the labor market from vaccine mandates and after nearly silence on the issue of vaccine injury and after the corruption in Big Tech and after the legal privileging mRNA over all other technologies, the industry’s top two leaders are fighting to keep their patent office industrial privileges. This is a very strange way to see this tale end.

To top it all, the patent holder of mRNA was opposed to these vaccines for years. His name is Robert Malone and he just wrote the following:

” Based on my experiences, each of these patents could be easily invalidated if they fail to cite the relevant prior art. Again, my financial interest is not in this case. Moderna fails to mention the patents I co-authored and my work, however, are now public. These patents belong to all people, and not just Moderna or CureVac or BioNTech. This may be why it has taken so long to erase me from history. Not only because some seek the Nobel Prize, but also because the intellectual property patent positions of some very profitable companies may become at risk if those contributions are acknowledged.”

Big Pharma is also being revealed. Not only Big Pharma, but also the patent system. The government.

There’s no political economy theory that can justify the combination of 1) a private company, 2) government-enforced ownership monopoly claims and claims of ownership, (3) indemnification for damage claims, 4 ) publicly traded stocks and 5 ) a forced customer list. It’s also not clear that this product actually worked. Top government officials have made wild claims about it.

This combination of industry and government would call for drastic change. The industry’s power can make any change possible. It is not enough, they say.

From the Brownstone Institute

Views expressed in this article are the opinions of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of The Epoch Times.