Why Only a "Handful of Companies" Reaped Enormous Profits from mRNA Vaccines —— How Patent Strategy Decided Pharmaceutical Supremacy [Paid]

The mRNA vaccines that saved the world during the COVID-19 pandemic. Yet the enormous profits went to only a handful of companies, such as Moderna, Pfizer, and BioNTech. Despite being a revolutionary medical technology, why did an "oligopoly of a few companies" emerge?

The answer lies less in the technology itself than in "dominant design" and patent strategy. In this article, we unravel the following mysteries from an IP perspective.

• Why mRNA became the dominant design (the de facto standard) for preventive vaccines
• The "international divisional and continuation application" mechanism built into the foundational patent
• Why a small German startup, BioNTech, was able to compete on equal terms with major pharmaceutical companies
• Why the basic researchers Drs. Karikó and Weissman won the Nobel Prize
• And what is being contested between companies right now (the Moderna vs Pfizer/BioNTech patent litigation)