The Institut Pasteur's intellectual property strategy is characterized by several dominant patents.
In the early 1980s, the Institut Pasteur started protecting pioneering biotechnology inventions with patents:
- production of the yeast-derived hepatitis B vaccine (still marketed by GSK and Merck),
- inventions based on the identification and molecular characterization of the HIV-1 and HIV-2 viruses,
- various high-risk HPV strains.
These initial major patents were followed by other dominant patents protecting previously unknown methods such as:
- homologous recombination,
- cold probes,
- meganucleases,
- lentiviral technology,
- the vaccine platform based on the measles vector.