Moderna sues Pfizer, BioNTech over patents related to COVID-19 vaccine
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Moderna said Friday that it is filing lawsuits against Pfizer and BioNTech, alleging that their COVID-19 messenger RNA vaccine infringes on patents crucial to the development of Moderna's mRNA vaccine.
"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 preceding the COVID-19 pandemic," Moderna CEO Stéphane Bancel, MSc, MBA, said in press release.
Moderna alleges that the COVID-19 vaccine developed by Pfizer and BioNTech — which was the first to receive emergency use authorization and approval in the United States — infringes on patents that Moderna filed between 2010 and 2016.
Specifically, Moderna said it believes Pfizer and BioNTech “copied two key features of Moderna's patented technologies which are critical to the success of mRNA vaccines” — the mRNA chemical modification that prevents undesirable immune responses in vaccine recipients, and an approach to encode for the full-length spike protein in a lipid nanoparticle formulation for a coronavirus.
“When COVID-19 emerged, neither Pfizer nor BioNTech had Moderna's level of experience with developing mRNA vaccines for infectious diseases, and they knowingly followed Moderna's lead in developing their own vaccine,” Moderna said in the release.
Pfizer and BioNTech were not expecting the lawsuits, according to a statement.
“Pfizer/BioNTech has not yet fully reviewed the complaint, but we are surprised by the litigation given the Pfizer/BioNTech COVID-19 vaccine was based on BioNTech’s proprietary mRNA technology and developed by both BioNTech and Pfizer,” Pfizer told Healio. “We remain confident in our intellectual property supporting the Pfizer/BioNTech vaccine and will vigorously defend against the allegations of the lawsuit.”
Moderna said none of the patent rights it is seeking to enforce are related to intellectual property generated during the company’s collaboration with the NIH to develop a COVID-19 vaccine. It is seeking compensation for what it said is Pfizer and BioNTech’s “ongoing use of Moderna’s patented technologies” in their vaccine, branded as Comirnaty.
Moderna said it will not enforce patents in 92 middle- and low-income countries.
"This foundational platform, which we began building in 2010, along with our patented work on coronaviruses in 2015 and 2016, enabled us to produce a safe and highly effective COVID-19 vaccine in record time after the pandemic struck," Bancel said, adding that Moderna is using mRNA technology to develop vaccines and treatments for other infectious diseases, including influenza and HIV.
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