Moderna pays US government $400M 'catch-up payment' under new COVID-19 vaccine license

Not long after Moderna kicked off its COVID-19 vaccine launch, questions started swirling around the origins of the company's mRNA technology and the intellectual property rights to its vaccines. Now, Moderna and the U.S. government are putting one dispute to bed.

In Moderna's earnings release Thursday, the company said it recently paid the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID) a $400 million "catch-up payment" under a new royalty-bearing license agreement between the parties.