How do you feel about a company that received $10 billion in taxpayer money getting a bailout?
If you find yourself seething, join the club.
That, however, is exactly what is happening with Moderna.
Write the Check
Moderna is being sued by Genevant Sciences and Arbutus Biopharma Corp. for a possible patent infringement.
The Department of Justice has intervened in the suit, taking up for Moderna.
The government is making the position that because it contracted Moderna to get a vaccine as quickly as possible, it is responsible if Moderna helped itself to someone else’s technology in the process.
The filing by the DOJ states, “Where, as here, the Government directly contracts to procure the allegedly infringing goods or services in a contract that grants authorization and consent, the ‘benefit to the Government’ is inherent.
“Indeed, the contractor’s compliance with the contract’s obligations alone demonstrate the benefit: that the Government obtains goods and services for which it pays.”
So, if that was the case, this falls on both Biden and Trump, because Trump’s administration would have made the deal, with Biden following up on it.
Susan Braden, a former chief judge of the U.S. Court of Federal Claims, stated, “What interested me was the fact of the government’s very strange procedural, I call it a gimmick.
“I’m a former federal judge. People don’t generally just pop up in the middle of a lawsuit unless they want to move to intervene, or they have something at stake in the case that would make them be a party.”
Regarding the premise of a possible deal being in place, Braden explained, “The concept was that they wanted the HHS director to use 1498(a) to go to a generic company and say, ‘Go ahead and infringe this patent – just pick a drug of some sort – and don’t worry because, when they sue you, we will come in and tell the federal judge that we are assuming responsibility, and it should be adjudicated in the Court of Federal Claims.'”
I don’t really care the reasoning because it is just one more way the government is sticking it to us.
Source: Fox News
