In late 2019, a mysterious pneumonia-like illness emerged in China that caught the attention of  the world’s health experts and scientists. The illness quickly spread around the globe. Research  into its cause revealed it to be the severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARSCoV-2). In January 2020, the World Health Organization (WHO) declared a global public health  emergency and named the illness COVID-19, in February 2020 (WHO, 2020). Soon afterwards, in  March 2020, the WHO officially declared COVID-19 a global pandemic. As of November 28, 2022,  there had been more than 637 million cases confirmed worldwide, resulting in over 6.6 million  deaths (WHO, n.d.-g), making it one of the deadliest pandemics in modern history, second only  to the 1918 flu pandemic (Adam, 2022). Its severity and the complexity in battling COVID-19  pandemic has been compounded by the ongoing emergence of SARS-CoV-2 variants, with  sublineages of the Omicron variant currently of most concern (WHO, n.d.-f). 

In response to the pandemic, scientists around the world have made great strides in  understanding the SARS-CoV-2 virus. This in turn has led to the development of preventive  vaccines and therapeutic agents. By leveraging decades of vaccine technology research and  development (R&D), scientists have been able to quickly first develop and then deploy a variety  of COVID-19 vaccines. As of December, 2022, more than 13.04 billion vaccine doses had been  administered globally (WHO, n.d.-c). In parallel, existing drugs have been repurposed and new  therapeutics developed to combat the disease. 

This report is a follow-up to WIPO’s first COVID-19-related Vaccines and Therapeutics Patent  Landscape Report published in early 2022 (WIPO, 2022). It presents an updated overview of  global patenting activity related to COVID-19 vaccines and therapeutics from January 2020  through September 2022, based on information publicly available as of September 30, 2022. 

Because of the lag in time between patent filing and publication of the related application (on  average 18 months), this report does not give a complete picture but rather a perspective on  publicly available COVID-19-related patent information up until September 2022.

Since the pandemic began, various patent analytics and scientific publications have sought to  shed light on patent activities and technologies related to COVID-19. A list of these publications  can be found in the Further reading section.