Moderna to sue Pfizer, BioNTech over patent infringement

On Friday, Moderna announced that they would be seeking damages through a lawsuit against Covid-19 vaccine competitor Pfizer and its partner BioNTech, alleging that the companies engaged in patent infringement.

In a statement, Moderna alleged that Pfizer, and its German partner BioNTech, copied "groundbreaking technology" developed by the company prior to the Covid-19 pandemic.

Among the technology in question are those relating to ensuring mRNA from the vaccine can enter the body without triggering a negative immune response, and the encoding of the full-length spike protein in a lipid nanoparticle formulation for a coronavirus, such as MERS-CoV.

Both technologies were developed by the company years before the pandemic began, and well before Moderna's collaboration with the National Institutes of Health.

"We believe that Pfizer and BioNTech unlawfully copied Moderna's inventions, and they have continued to use them without permission," the company's Chief Legal Officer, Shannon Thyme Klinger, said.

She went on to explain that Moderna would like to see Pfizer and BioNTech compensate them for their "ongoing use" of the aforementioned technologies, but only outside of AMC 92 countries, where their patents are not enforced. They reiterated that the goal of the lawsuit is not to see Pfizer-BioNTech's vaccine removed from the market.

Additionally, Moderna stated that they are not seeking damages from sales in AMC 92 countries, nor from any time prior to March 8, 2022, as per their patent pledge.

"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," said Moderna CEO Stéphane Bancel.

"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."

He went on to explain that the company is "using our mRNA technology platform to develop medicines that could treat and prevent infectious diseases like influenza and HIV, as well as autoimmune and cardiovascular diseases and rare forms of cancer."