evidence: Financial analyst David Martin misrepresents studies and patent applications to promote the baseless claim that SARS-CoV-2 was developed as a bioweapon [...] In May 2023, a video featuring financial analyst David Martin went viral on social media platforms, gathering millions of views on Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, and TikTok (examples here, here, here, and here). In it, Martin claimed that SARS-CoV-2 was an act of "premeditated domestic terrorism" and that the virus is a weapon that was engineered through decades of research with the objective of "get[ting] the world to accept a universal vaccine template". [...] Martin also cited another patent (WO02086068A2), submitted in this case by the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill in 2002. Pointing out that this patent "mysteriously preceded SARS 1.0 by a year", Martin suggested that this research could be the origin of not only SARS-CoV-2 but even the SARS-CoV-1 epidemic. He went even further by claiming that a term included in the patent, "infectious replication-defective clone", means that the new virus is "a weapon" designed to target certain individuals. This is false.