A global landscape of patenting activity in COVID-19 vaccines

This paper analyses global patent filings for COVID-19 vaccines to identify where vaccine candidates were developed and where patent protection was being sought, as well as to investigate the patterns of collaboration among applicants. The paper builds on a 2023 report from the World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO), selecting 1178 relevant patent families across eight categories of vaccine platforms, and using WIPO's data on applicants' countries and three types of applicants: corporate applicants, individual inventors, and universities and research organisations (UROs). We searched for applications in 126 jurisdictions, combined into three groups: the G7, G20 nations not in the G7, and non-G20 nations. G20 nations not in the G7 were the most common destination of filings, and applications originating in these countries constitute the greatest number of families, including those covering novel vaccine platforms. Corporate applicants dominated the G7 and the non-G20 but were as relevant as UROs for the non-G7 in G20. Applications from UROs were relatively more focused on conventional platforms, while corporate applicants were more focused on novel platforms. We repeated the analysis for pharmaceutical and biotechnological patent families more broadly in order to provide a reference point for interpreting the results for COVID-19 vaccine patents. Comparison of the two samples reveals unique patterns of patenting activity for COVID-19 vaccines, including more frequent collaboration, especially between corporate applicants and UROs.