Plaintiff
3 cases as plaintiff.
Moderna, Inc. (known as Moderna Therapeutics, Inc. until its 2018 rebrand) is a publicly traded biopharmaceutical company headquartered at 325 Binney Street, Cambridge, Massachusetts. It was founded in 2010 and completed an IPO on Nasdaq (ticker: MRNA) in December 2018; it is not a subsidiary of any larger group. Public profiles put headcount at roughly 4,700 employees, with fiscal-year 2025 revenue of about $1.9 billion (down from roughly $3.2 billion in 2024).
Moderna develops messenger RNA (mRNA) medicines and vaccines. Its commercial products are Spikevax (COVID-19 vaccine), mNEXSPIKE, and mRESVIA (respiratory syncytial virus vaccine); it also operates its own manufacturing sites. Its clinical pipeline spans infectious disease, oncology, cardiovascular disease, and rare genetic disease. Revenue remains heavily concentrated in COVID-19 vaccine sales.
On litigation posture, the tracked data show 3 cases as plaintiff and 1 as defendant. The three plaintiff-side matters are Patent Trial and Appeal Board proceedings filed in 2018–2019 by Moderna against Arbutus Biopharma and affiliates, plus the related Federal Circuit appeal in Protiva Biotherapeutics, Inc. et al. v. Moderna Therapeutics, Inc. (2019). These are not NPE-style assertions: Moderna is an operating company using PTAB invalidity challenges and appeals within a single technology dispute over lipid nanoparticle (LNP) delivery patents. None of the tracked matters sits in a plaintiff-friendly district court venue such as the Eastern District of Texas; all are before the PTAB or the Federal Circuit.
External context: the same LNP dispute continued after the tracked period, with Arbutus and Genevant Sciences suing Moderna in Delaware federal court in February 2022. In March 2026 the parties announced a global settlement under which Moderna would pay $950 million upfront plus up to $1.3 billion contingent on its Section 1498 government-contractor appeal, and receive a non-exclusive license for LNP technology in infectious-disease vaccines. This later proceeding is not reflected in the case data above.
Sources: Moderna corporate disclosures; PitchBook; Fortune; Arbutus/Genevant and Roivant press releases; IPWatchdog; Reuters.
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Moderna Therapeutics filed an IPR against Arbutus's U.S. 8,058,069. The PTAB instituted review on July 24, 2019 and issued a Final Written Decision on July 23, 2020 holding Moderna failed to show claims 1–22 unpatentable under §103.
Inter partes review of US 9,364,435. The PTAB confirmed claims 7-8, 10-11, 13 and 16-20, but held claims 1-6, 9, 12 and 14-15 unpatentable as anticipated, leaving the '435 patent with a subset of claims.
Moderna Therapeutics petitioned for inter partes review of all claims 1-22 of US 9,404,127. The PTAB issued a final written decision holding all challenged claims unpatentable as inherently anticipated by U.S. Patent No. 8,058,069.