Bharat Biotech moves to adds ICMR as co-owner of Covid-19 vaccine patent

Bharat Biotech has added the Indian Council of Medical Research (ICMR) as co-owner of the Covid-19 vaccine patent.

Notably, Bharat Biotech was working on developing the Covid-19 vaccine as a top priority to ensure product availability at the earliest. The Covid vaccine development of Bharat Biotech International Limited (BBIL) was faced with multiple challenges and all organisations 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 the above circumstances and since BBIL-ICMR agreement copy, being a confidential document, was not accessible. Hence, ICMR was not included in the original application, the press release said.

Though this was purely unintentional, such mistakes are not uncommon for the Patent office and therefore, Patent Law provides provisions to rectify such mistakes, the release 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," the press release said.

It further informed that necessary legal documents are being prepared for it and BBIL will file those documents in the Patent office as soon as they are ready and signed.

Notably, these actions are in accordance with the Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) signed between ICMR-NIV Pune and BBIL for joint development of the Covid-19 vaccine in April 2020, the press release informed.