From drug pricing to how widely the vaccine should be available, the money the U.S. government is pouring into coronavirus research will give it influence over any eventual vaccine or testing patents. Federal officials even have the “nuclear option” to use the government’s eminent domain-like authority to force drug companies to license their discoveries to competitors.
While the U.S. government could wield its partial ownership of patents from research funded by the National Institutes of Health or the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, it’s unlikely to take that step just yet, attorneys said. For now the goal is to ...