The Hyderabad-based company that had developed Covaxin from the vaccine isolated by and ICMR Institute had not given credit to ICMR earlier
Having earlier omitted the Indian Council of Medical Research from the Covaxin patent application, Bharat Biotech has now claimed that it was an unintentional mistake because of the rush in which the patent application was filed. It has now added ICMR as a co-owner, the company said in a statement.
BB had developed the vaccine from the SARS-COV2 virus isolated by the National Institute of Virology in Pune which is an ICMR institute. That is why the initial omission of the premier medical research body from the patent document had raised eyebrows.
In its statement, ICMR said: “The Covid vaccine development of BBIL was faced with multiple challenges and all organizations were in a rush to develop vaccines and file the appropriate patents, prior to any other entity or prior to any data being published in journals. Bharat Biotech’s covid vaccine application was filed in above circumstances and since BBIL-ICMR agreement copy, being a confidential document, was not accessible. Hence ICMR was not included in the original application. Though this was purely unintentional, such mistakes are not uncommon for the Patent office therefore Patent Law provides provisions to rectify such mistakes.”
The company, in the defensive statement added that it was working on developing the COVID-19 vaccine as a top priority to ensure product availability at the earliest. It added: “BBIL has great respect for ICMR and is thankful to ICMR for their continuous support on various projects therefore as soon as this inadvertent mistake was noticed, BBIL has already started the process to rectify it by including ICMR as co-owner of the patent applications for Covid-19 vaccine. Necessary legal documents are being prepared for it and BBIL will file those documents in Patent office as soon as those are ready and signed. These actions are in accordance with the Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) signed between ICMR-NIV Pune and BBIL for joint development of COVID-19 vaccine in April 2020.”
