US pharmaceutical giant Moderna has filed two lawsuits against competitors, Pfizer and BioNTech, over their alleged infringement on one of its patents – the mRNA platform. The latter is a delivery method for genetic information used in vaccine production, namely in the three companies' COVID-19 vaccines.
One of the lawsuits was filed with the US District Court for Massachusetts, while the other was with the Regional Court of Düsseldorf, Germany, where BioNTech is based.
Moderna claims that Pfizer and BioNTech illegally copied the mRNA technology without its consent and then used it to develop Comirnaty – the COVID-19 jab of which they sold billions of doses.
"Moderna believes that Pfizer and BioNTech's COVID-19 vaccine Comirnaty infringes patents Moderna filed between 2010 and 2016 covering Moderna's foundational mRNA technology. This groundbreaking technology was critical to the development of Moderna's own mRNA COVID-19 vaccine, Spikevax," Moderna said in the statement.
The pharmaceutical company explained that it had pledged not to enforce any COVID-related patents as long as the pandemic continued. But since vaccine supply was no longer an issue, Moderna considered that it can rightfully claim compensation from Pfizer and BioNTech's use of its technology.
The company stressed that the claim does not affect the sales of mRNA vaccines in countries mentioned in the GAVI COVAX Advance Market Commitment (AMC 92), and only relates to the sales of Comirnaty in other countries. Moderna did not specify in its press release the size of the monetary damages it seeks to pursue in the two lawsuits.
Neither Pfizer nor BioNTech have commented on the accusations yet.
The mRNA platform is relatively new technology, which was mostly used in vaccines for animals until 2020. However, with the development of Pfizer\BioNTech and Moderna COVID-19 vaccines, the technology received its first broad use in humans.
\Other popular COVID-19 vaccines, like Sputnik V, J&J and Oxford\AstraZeneca, used variants of adenovirus to carry coronavirus spike protein's genome. Two Chinese vaccines produced by Sinovac and Sinopharm used traditional inactivated virus technology in their jabs.