European Patent EP2578685B1, naming Karikó as inventor, was granted by the EPO for mRNA technologies.
On January 2, 2019, the European Patent Office granted European Patent EP2578685B1, another patent naming Katalin Karikó as inventor and directed to mRNA-related technologies.
This grant further consolidated European legal protection for the modified-mRNA innovations developed by Karikó and her collaborators, adding to a portfolio that by this point spanned multiple related patents across the United States and Europe.
Coming just months before the COVID-19 pandemic would begin, this patent's grant occurred during a period when Karikó, working at BioNTech, and her scientific partners were quietly advancing platform technologies that would soon be mobilized at unprecedented speed for pandemic vaccine development.
The steady accumulation of these European patents through the late 2010s illustrates the methodical, often unheralded process of translating a scientific discovery into internationally protected intellectual property — a process essential to enabling the rapid manufacturing and distribution deals that made mRNA COVID-19 vaccines available globally within a year of the pandemic's onset.