Does Anthony Fauci Own ‘Half the Patent’ for Moderna’s COVID Vaccine?

In a recent debate with Alan Dershowitz, Robert Kennedy Jr. claimed that Dr. Anthony Fauci holds a patent for one of the drugs in vaccine trials for coronavirus. “The problem is Anthony Fauci put $500 million of our dollars into that vaccine [being produced by Moderna]. He owns half the patent,” said Kennedy. “He and these five guys who are working for him were entitled to collect royalties from that.”

The claim was then repeated by outlets and media figures like Rush Limbaugh, InfoWars, and Gateway Pundit. Kennedy made the same claim during an interview with the Gateway Pundit podcast in April and similarly claimed that the National Institutes of Health—which houses the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, of which Fauci is director—“Owns Half of Moderna Vaccine” in early July in an article he wrote for Children’s Health Defense, an anti-vaccination advocacy group that Kennedy founded and for which he now serves as president and chairman.