 An administrative court run by the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office on Thursday rejected Modernas arguments to invalidate a U.S. patent owned by Arbutus, sparking worries over its efforts to develop next-generation vaccines, including a coronavirus vaccine. Moderna said the courts ruling relates to actions it took in response to longstanding aggressive posture taken by Arbutus against developers of nucleic acid-based therapeutics and began well before the development of mRNA-1273, its COVID-19 vaccine candidate. 