The referenced names used in the article to the US patent is the same name mentioned in the US patent.
- Bancel S, Chakraborty T, De Fougerolles A, Elbashir SM, John M, Roy A, et al. Modified Polynucleotides for the Production of Oncology-Related Proteins and Peptides. Cambridge, MA: United States Patent. (2016).
Bancel was the one who sent an email asking for the sequence to the virus.
A patent application number isn't the same as the patent number. I think what has happened here is that this country isolated the sequence than ran a data base search for any patents on that sequence, hence the 2016 patent. Martin listed the patent application number not the actual patent assigned number and that's where the confusion rises. Martin knew about it because he specializes in biological patents. Another country on the other hand wouldn't necessarily know that a patent existed until they ran it through a data base or had been up on Martins work in all this. The only way they could run it through a data base to see if it had been patented would have been to find the sequence, which they did.