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Ampoule containing the Moderna vaccine
Photo: Rogelio V. Solis/AP
The US manufacturer Moderna is suing the pharmaceutical company Pfizer and its German partner Biontech for patent infringement in the development of corona vaccines.
According to the US company, the two companies copied technologies that Moderna had developed years before the pandemic.
The lawsuit has been filed in a US district court in Massachusetts and in the Dusseldorf district court, Moderna said.
"We are filing these lawsuits to protect the innovative mRNA technology platform that we pioneered, invested billions of dollars in developing and patented over the decade prior to the COVID-19 pandemic," said Moderna CEO Stephane Bancel.
Moderna is only ten years old.
The company, based in Cambridge, Massachusetts, is considered a pioneer of mRNA vaccine technology alongside Biontech.
In December 2020, the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) first granted Pfizer/Biontech and a week later Moderna emergency approval for their corona vaccines.
Modern accuses Biontech of two patent infringements
Moderna alleges that Pfizer/Biontech copied, without permission, mRNA technology that Moderna patented between 2010 and 2016 — well before the pandemic began.
Moderna said in 2020 that it would initially not enforce patent rights to help others develop their own vaccines, particularly for low- and middle-income countries.
However, in March 2022, Moderna said it expects companies like Pfizer and Biontech to respect intellectual property rights.
Pfizer and Biontech are already facing multiple lawsuits from other companies claiming the partnership's vaccine infringes their patents.
The German company Curevac, for example, also filed a lawsuit against Biontech in Germany in July.
Pfizer/Biontech have stated that they will vigorously defend their patents.
Moderna, in turn, has also been sued for patent infringement in the United States and is in an ongoing dispute with the US National Institutes of Health over the rights to the mRNA technology.
In Friday's statement, Moderna said Pfizer/Biontech had acquired two types of intellectual property.
One is an mRNA structure that Moderna says its scientists have been developing since 2010 and became the first company to test it in human studies in 2015.
“Pfizer and Biontech advanced four different vaccine candidates into clinical testing, including options that would have circumvented Moderna's innovative path.
However, Pfizer and Biontech ultimately settled on a vaccine that has the exact same mRNA chemical alteration as their vaccine,” Moderna said.
The second alleged breach concerns a vaccine being developed against another coronavirus that causes a disease called MERS (Middle East Respiratory Syndrome).
However, the procedure does not jeopardize the planned German vaccination campaign against Omikron in the fall.
Moderna is seeking damages, but not the withdrawal of the Biontech vaccines from the market.
beb/Reuters
