False: A list of U.S. patents is evidence that viruses are man-made.

Patents are not proof that the viruses were man-made; they refer to applications made over the years while studying different viruses.On Facebook, a list of patents linked to specific diseases and viruses is being shared to imply that viruses are man-made. The list includes AIDS, H1N1, Ebola, swine flu, BSE, Zika, SARS, and coronavirus. Underneath each item is a patent number, and the post has a caption claiming: “Viruses can ONLY be patented if they are MAN-MADE. Read that again, xxx.” With the claim, the user implied that COVID-19 is man-made. We looked at all the patent numbers listed and found that none of them prove that those viruses or diseases are man-made. Instead, they show that different organizations applied for patents during their research on a specific virus. The first one on the list is US-Patent 5676977. This is not a patent for AIDS, but it is a patent from the 1990s for tetrasilver tetroxide molecular crystal devices that the patent applicants had hoped would be able to cure AIDS effectively. The second patent, US-Patent 8835624, is listed under H1N1. But this is not a patent for this virus. It is actually referring to an aptamer, and scientists wanted to use this specific aptamer to identify the H1N1 virus. The patent is not for the swine flu virus itself. US-Patent 20120251502 is listed under Ebola and refers to a strain of human Ebola virus called EboBun and was applied for by the US Department of Health. It applied for the new virus's patent to enable companies to use the virus to create potential vaccines and stop companies from restricting research around it. US-Patent CA2741523 listed under Swine Flu was a patent applied by the U.S. Centres of Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) for the Ebola virus EboBun, not swine flu. This application was made to the Canadian Intellectual Property Office, and it does not prove that the virus was man-made. US-Patent 0070031450 A1 listed under BSE (Bovine spongiform encephalopathy) does not exist. ATTC VR-84 (Rockefeller Foundation) listed under ZIKA is not of a patent or an application number; rather, it’s the name of a particular strain of the Zika virus, and ATCC stands for the American Type Culture Collection. This organization collects samples of different pathogens. VR-84 is the name of the Zika strain that was first isolated by scientists. There is no evidence that the Rockefeller Foundation did not patent the virus. US-Patent 7897744 & 8506968 is listed under SARS. The first one is a U.S. patent for the SARS virus's genomic sequences, applied by the Canadian Public Health Agency. This patent application was made in 2004, after the first SARS outbreak in 2002. This does not mean the Canadian Public Health Agency invented the SARS virus. The CDC also applied for a patent on SARS to keep information on it in the public domain. US-Patent 10130701 listed under coronavirus refers to a patent application from 2015 that does exist for one type of coronavirus, but not the same one as COVID-19. Coronavirus is a broad category of viruses that includes the common cold, SARS, and COVID-19.