The Biden Regime has decided that Americans suffering from vaccine-related injuries connected to the Moderna COVID vaccine is not cruel enough. Now they want taxpayers to foot the bill for a major bailout of the pharmaceutical giant.
The Gateway Pundit previously reported that Moderna failed to convince a federal judge that it should not have to face a patent lawsuit over its COVID-19 vaccine and that the US government should have been sued instead.
TGP also reported that in 2022, Arbutus Biopharma Corp and Genevant Sciences filed a lawsuit against Moderna in the U.S. District Court for the District of Delaware, accusing the vaccine manufacturer of patent infringement on its COVID-19 vaccine.
The two biotech companies sued Moderna over infringement claims on six patents concerning the manufacture and sale of Moderna’s Covid-19 vaccine. They want the federal court to award them monetary damages due to the infringement.
Now the Department of “Justice” has intervened in an attempt to rescue Moderna and put taxpayers on the hook. A United States attorney filed a “statement of interest” to argue the federal government must take on any liability that Moderna might be guilty of related to the COVID shot.
A highly-respected former federal judge calls this “a misuse of the law.”
Fox News exclusively reported:
The Biden administration quietly inserted itself into a private patent infringement lawsuit two biotech companies filed against COVID-19 vaccine maker Moderna, in a move experts said could establish a dangerous precedent.
In a surprise filing last month, U.S. Attorney David Weiss issued a “statement of interest” in the case on behalf of the Department of Defense and Department of Health and Human Services (HHS), invoking a rarely-used early 1900s law to argue that the federal government should take on any liability for patent infringement Moderna may be guilty of related to the development of its COVID-19 vaccine.
“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,” the filing stated. “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.”
The filing concluded that companies whose patents Moderna may have infringed during COVID-19 vaccine development should be limited to pursuing a claim against the federal government in the U.S. Court of Federal Claims.
Moderna – which received about $10 billion in taxpayer money to produce its COVID-19 vaccine and has since earned billions more in profits selling it – was sued in early 2022 by Genevant Sciences and Arbutus Biopharma Corp., which accused Moderna of using technology they have patented in its vaccine. The two companies have asked a federal court in Delaware to award them damages for the infringement.
“What interested me was the fact of the government’s very strange procedural, I call it a gimmick,” Susan Braden, a former chief judge of the U.S. Court of Federal Claims, told Fox News Digital in an interview.
“I’m a former federal judge,” Braden said. “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.”
She noted that the Department of Justice (DOJ) has attempted to argue that a government use patent statute – 28 U.S.C. § 1498 – provides the legal basis for taking on patent infringement liability. The statute has generally been invoked by the government in cases related to its purchase of military equipment and, in one case, was used to stockpile an antidote for anthrax, a chemical weapon, in 2001.
In recent years, though, Democratic lawmakers have urged the HHS to invoke the statute to break pharmaceutical patents and force drug prices lower. In 2021, Sens. Elizabeth Warren, D-Mass., and Amy Klobuchar, D-Minn., urged the Biden administration to use the law to reduce pharmaceutical prices.
“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,’” Braden told Fox News Digital, referencing the effort led by Warren.
“That was the court I was chief of for many years,” she continued. “That’s not a good way of running a railroad. And I think it’s a misuse of the law.”
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