Intellectual property war4 Feb 2021 10:05
I’m preaching to the choir here of course, but we all agree that accurate testing will be as important to delivering us from lockdown as the vaccine roll-out. If, as we also believe, affimers prove to be the most exquisite reagent for identifying the infectious, and a U.K. company owns the IP for them, is it any wonder that Avacta is shrouded in secrecy? It wouldn’t be a surprise to me if GCHQ weren’t all over this, as they were for vaccine development.
(From June)
“Jeremy Fleming, the Director of Britain’s cyber spy agency, confirmed GCHQ had seen attacks on the UK’s health infrastructure in recent weeks.
States and criminals are “going after things which are sensitive to us,” he said.
Responding to reports that foreign powers are targeting laboratories researching coronavirus vaccines, he said “It's a high priority for us to protect the health sector [and] protect, particularly, the race to acquire a vaccine”.