The NIH Office of Technology Transfer Director, Dr. Tara Kirby, has been recognized by Intellectual Asset Management (IAM) as a Market Maker of the year. IAM’s Market Makers recognizes the top 40 key deal makers and decision takers in the world, as selected by the IAM editorial team. They consider who has driven major asset transactions, who has worked tirelessly to innovate in the dealmaking space and have engineered value from intellectual property.

Dr. Kirby was selected as #7 out of the list of 40 Market Makers. Included below is an excerpt from IAM’s article:

“Though government departments are seldom featured in these rankings, the US National Institutes of Health struck several important recent deals, becoming the highest-earning covid vaccine patent licensor. Headed up by Tara Kirby – Director of the Office of Technology Transfer – NIH's IP licensing function secured an agreement with BioNTech in which the jab maker agreed to boost its previous payments to the department by $791.5 million. Agreed just before Christmas 2024, this brought to an end a contract dispute between the parties that had been triggered when NIH served BioNTech with a notice of default in March last year. The BioNTech deal built on an agreement struck by Kirby’s team with Moderna Therapeutics. Moderna revealed in 2023 that it had paid $400 million in catch-up payments to the government departments as part of a new IP license agreement that also guaranteed NIH low single-digit royalties on ongoing covid vaccine sales. The pandemic has seen NIH’s patent haul skyrocket: having earned just $78.1 million in 2019 and $63.4 million in 2020, it generated $704 million in royalties in 2022 and $639 million in 2023. Its deal with BioNTech adds to this success.”

While Dr. Kirby was selected by IAM for this honor, she merely represents a team of dedicated professionals without whom these agreements could not have been completed, including many key players from the NIH Office of Technology Transfer, the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases Technology Transfer Intellectual Property Office, and the HHS Office of General Counsel.

If you would like to read the full article, you can find it on IAM’s website. If you would like to read more about NIH’s contribution’s to Comirnaty®.