The patent maze of COVID 19 vaccines

Introduction: NGOs and governments of some countries have demanded suspension of patents protection of COVID-19 vaccines and the underlying technology to enhance worldwide access. At the same time, companies actually developing and producing COVID-19 vaccines have to navigate the patent landscape and have to deal with 3rd party patents.
Areas covered: This article discusses these different aspects regarding patent protection of COVID-19 vaccines. Patent searches have been carried out in Espacenet and the ORBIT database. Different search strings were used by the author, based on his own background knowledge.
Expert opinion: SARS-CoV 2 was for the first time fully described on 10 January 2020, so it is so far not possible to determine if, and by whom, patent applications were filed for respective vaccines. On that background, allegations that patents would be responsible for insufficient access to the vaccine in particular in developing countries are baseless. Even the key players are facing contraints caused by third-party patents, and legal disputes are already ongoing. Anyway, the bigger obstacle for worldwide equitable vaccine distribution seems to reside in know how transfer and production capacities, as ramping up production requires considerable efforts.