Bharat Biotech adds ICMR as co-owner in Covid vaccine patent

ICMR and the National Institute of Virology (NIV), Pune had worked with Bharat Biotech to develop the indigenously developed Covid-19 vaccine, Covaxin. (Bharat Biotech adds ICMR as co-owner of Covid-19 vaccine patent. (Representative image)

Bharat Biotech has added the Indian Council of Medical Research (ICMR) as co-owner of the Covid-19 vaccine patent. A row had erupted over Hyderabad-based vaccine maker, Bharat Biotech International, omitting ICMR in its patent filing.

“BBIL has great respect for ICMR and this was an inadvertent mistake, BBIL has already started the process to rectify it by including ICMR as co-owner,” the company said.

Bharat Biotech has taken credit for being the inventor of  Covaxin, the COVID-19 vaccine, developed jointly by BBIL and ICMR. BBIL has filed for patents in India, US and Europe. Krishna Ella, chairman and managing director, of Bharat Biotech and Deepak Kumar are applicants filing for a patent, which contradicted the health ministry statement made in Rajya Sabha about jointly owning the intellectual property rights.

ICMR and the National Institute of Virology (NIV), Pune had worked with Bharat Biotech to develop the indigenously developed Covid-19 vaccine, Covaxin. Bharat Biotech has acknowledged support from ICMR for providing the SARS CoV2 virus, animal studies, virus characterization, test kits and partial funding for clinical trial sites. Bharat Biotech had developed Covaxin under a partnership with the ICMR and NIV as per a MoU signed in August 2020.

Bharat Biotech 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 the above circumstances and since the BBIL-ICMR agreement copy, being a confidential document, was not accessible. Hence ICMR was not included in the original application. Though this was unintentional, such mistakes are not uncommon for the Patent office therefore Patent Law provides provisions to rectify such mistakes.” BBIL said. BBIL said necessary legal documents were being prepared for it will file those documents in the Patent office.

The then ICMR director general, Balram Bhargava had said following the successful isolation of the SARS-CoV2 at ICMR-NIV, Pune, ICMR and BBIL had embarked upon one of the most successful virus isolation into an effective COVID-19 vaccines. The bench-to-bedside journey of Covaxin, in less than ten months showcases the strength of Indian academia and industry fighting against the odds and carving niches in the global community, Bhargava had said.

The whole-virion inactivated Vero cell vaccine is based on a live virus. The SARS-CoV2 strains provided under material transfer agreements to Bharat Biotech were sourced from ICMR-NIV.  NIV had invested its funds to enable vaccine development work. In return for this support, Bharat Biotech said it would pay royalties to ICMR and the NIV based on product sales.

A total of 220 crore vaccines have been administered in the country out of which 36,39,30,701 were BBIL’s Covaxin.