Item 4. Controls and Procedures
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Item 4. Controls and Procedures
Disclosure Controls and Procedures
Our management, with the participation of our Chief Executive Officer and our Chief Financial Officer, evaluated the effectiveness of our disclosure controls and procedures as of September 30, 2025. The term “disclosure controls and procedures,” as defined in Rules 13a-15(e) and 15d-15(e) under the Exchange Act means controls and other procedures of a company that are designed to ensure that information required to be disclosed by a company in the reports that it files or submits under the Exchange Act is recorded, processed, summarized and reported, within the time periods specified in the SEC’s rules and forms. Disclosure controls and procedures include, without limitation, controls and procedures designed to ensure that information required to be disclosed by a company in the reports that it files or submits under the Exchange Act is accumulated and communicated to the company’s management, including its principal executive and principal financial officers, as appropriate to allow timely decisions regarding required disclosure. Management recognizes that any controls and procedures, no matter how well designed and operated, can provide only reasonable assurance of achieving their objectives and management necessarily applies its judgment in evaluating the cost-benefit relationship of possible controls and procedures. Based on the evaluation of our disclosure controls and procedures as of September 30, 2025, our Chief Executive Officer and Chief Financial Officer concluded that, as of such date, our disclosure controls and procedures were effective at the reasonable assurance level.
Changes in Internal Control over Financial Reporting
There were no changes in our internal control over financial reporting (as defined in Rules 13a-15(f) and 15d-15(f) under the Exchange Act) during the three months ended September 30, 2025 that have materially affected, or are reasonably likely to materially affect, our internal control over financial reporting.
Inherent Limitations on Effectiveness of Controls
Our management, including our Chief Executive Officer and Chief Financial Officer, believes that our disclosure controls and procedures and internal control over financial reporting are designed to provide reasonable assurance of achieving their objectives and are effective at the reasonable assurance level. However, our management does not expect that our disclosure controls and procedures or our internal control over financial reporting will prevent all errors and all fraud. A control system, no matter how well-conceived and operated, can provide only reasonable, not absolute, assurance that the objectives of the control system are met. Further, the design of a control system must reflect the fact that there are resource constraints, and the benefits of controls must be considered relative to their costs. Because of the inherent limitations in all control systems, no evaluation of controls can provide absolute assurance that all control issues and instances of fraud, if any, have been detected. These inherent limitations include the realities that judgments in decision making can be faulty, and that breakdowns can occur because of a simple error or mistake. Additionally, controls can be circumvented by the individual acts of some persons, by the collusion of two or more people or by a management override of the controls. The design of any system of controls also is based in part upon certain assumptions about the likelihood of future events, and there can be no assurance that any design will succeed in achieving its stated goals under all potential future conditions; over time, controls may become inadequate because of changes in conditions, or the degree of compliance with policies or procedures may deteriorate. Because of the inherent limitations in a cost-effective control system, misstatements due to error or fraud may occur and not be detected.
PART II
Item 1. Legal Proceedings
We are involved in various claims and legal proceedings of a nature considered ordinary course in our business, including those described in our 2024 Form 10-K under the heading “Legal Proceedings.” Most of the issues raised by these claims are highly complex and subject to substantial uncertainties. For a description of risks relating to these and other legal proceedings we face, see Part I, Item 1A., “Risk Factors,” of our 2024 Form 10-K, including the discussion under the headings entitled “Risks related to our intellectual property” and “Risks related to the manufacturing of our commercial products and product candidates.” The outcome of any such proceedings, regardless of the merits, is inherently uncertain; therefore, assessing the likelihood of loss and any estimated damages is difficult and subject to considerable judgment.
Proceedings Related to Patents Owned by Alnylam
As more fully described in our 2024 Form 10-K, Alnylam Pharmaceuticals, Inc. (Alnylam) brought two proceedings against Moderna in the U.S. District Court for the District of Delaware asserting that the manufacture and sale of our COVID vaccine infringes certain U.S. patents concerning cationic lipids. The Court entered a Final Judgment of non-infringement of all asserted patents in these lawsuits. In the first case, Alnylam appealed and the Federal Circuit Court of Appeals decided the appeal in our favor on June 4, 2025. Following the Federal Circuit decision, Moderna and Alnylam entered into an agreement on September 15, 2025, to settle all disputes between the parties, including filing a stipulated dismissal of Alnylam’s claims with prejudice. The settlement did not include payments of any kind by Moderna.
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