Bharat Biotech on Saturday said it has added the Indian Council of Medical Research (ICMR) as a co-owner of the Covid vaccine patent.

Hyderabad-based vaccine maker Bharat Biotech International Ltd (BBIL) had not included ICMR in its original patent filing for Covaxin, leading to a controversy. The company said in a statement that the omission was “inadvertent”.

It said, “Bharat Biotech’s COVID vaccine application was filed under the above circumstances and since the copy of the BBIL-ICMR agreement, being a confidential document, was not accessible, ICMR was not impleaded in the original application.”

The company further said that though it was “completely unintentional”, such mistakes are “not uncommon for the patent office, hence the patent law provides provisions to rectify such mistakes”.

The vaccine maker said it has “great respect for ICMR and is grateful to the agency for their continued support on various projects”.

“Therefore, as soon as this inadvertent mistake was detected, BBIL initiated the process to rectify it by including ICMR as co-owner in the patent applications for COVID-19 vaccine,” the statement said.

The company said that the necessary legal documents are being prepared and will be filed with the patent office as soon as they are ready and signed.

ICMR is a premier medical research body under the Union Health Ministry. ICMR-National Institute of Virology, Pune and Bharat Biotech have jointly developed Covaxin following a memorandum of understanding (MoU) in April 2020.