Modern is suing Pfizer and its German partner BioNTech for patent infringement in the development of the first Covid-19 vaccine approved in the United States, claiming to have copied the technology that Moderna developed years before the pandemic.
Pfizer shares fell 1.4% before the bell, while BioNTech fell roughly 2%.
The lawsuit, which is seeking indefinite compensation, was filed in the United States District Court in Massachusetts and the Dusseldorf Regional Court in Germany, Moderna said in a press release on Friday.
“We are filing these lawsuits to protect the innovative mRNA technology platform that we pioneered, invested billions of dollars in creating and patented during the decade leading up to the Covid-19 pandemic,” Moderna CEO Stephane Bancel said in the statement.
Moderna Inc, alone, and the partnership of Pfizer Inc and BioNTech SE were two of the first groups to develop a vaccine for the novel coronavirus.
Just a decade ago, Moderna, based in Cambridge, Massachusetts, was an innovator in messenger RNA (mRNA) vaccine technology that enabled unprecedented speed in the development of the Covid-19 vaccine.
An approval process that previously took years was completed in just a few months, thanks largely to the breakthrough in mRNA vaccines, which teach human cells how to make a protein that will trigger an immune response.
BioNTech, based in Germany, had also worked in this field when it partnered with US pharmaceutical giant Pfizer.
The United States. The Food and Drug Administration granted emergency use clearance for the Covid-19 vaccine first to Pfizer / BioNTech in December 2020, then a week later to Moderna.
of Moderna Vaccine against covid – its only commercial product – brought in sales of $ 10.4 billion this year, while Pfizer’s vaccine produced about $ 22 billion.
Moderna claims that Pfizer / BioNTech, without authorization, copied the mRNA technology that Moderna had patented between 2010 and 2016, well before COVID-19 emerged in 2019 and exploded into global consciousness in early 2020.
At the start of the pandemic, Moderna said it would not apply its Covid-19 patents to help others develop their own vaccines, particularly for low- and middle-income countries. But in March 2022, Moderna said it expected companies like Pfizer and BioNTech to respect its intellectual property rights. He said he would not seek damages for any business before March 8, 2022.
Patent litigation is not uncommon in the early stages of new technology.
Pfizer and BioNTech are already facing numerous lawsuits from other companies claiming the partnership’s vaccine infringes their patents. Pfizer / BioNTech have said they will vigorously defend their patents.
Germany’s CureVac, for example, also filed a lawsuit against BioNTech in Germany in July. BioNTech responded in a statement that his work was original.
Moderna has also been sued for patent infringement in the United States and has an ongoing dispute with the U.S. National Institutes of Health over mRNA technology rights.
In Friday’s statement, Moderna said Pfizer / BioNTech has appropriated two types of intellectual property.
One involved an mRNA structure that Moderna claims its scientists began developing in 2010 and were the first to validate in human testing in 2015.
“Pfizer and BioNTech conducted four different candidate vaccines in clinical trials, which included options that would have avoided Moderna’s innovative path. Pfizer and BioNTech, however, ultimately decided to go ahead with a vaccine that has the exact same chemical modification as the mRNA to its vaccine, “Moderna said in its statement.
The second alleged violation involves the encoding of a full-length spike protein that Moderna claims its scientists developed while creating a vaccine for the coronavirus that causes Middle Eastern respiratory syndrome (MERS).
Although the MERS vaccine was never released, its development helped Moderna quickly roll out its Covid-19 vaccine.
Pfizer said the company had not been served and was unable to comment at this time.
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