Gloves Off: Moderna Sues Pfizer/BioNTech Over COVID-19 Vaccine Patents
The lawsuit comes despite Moderna’s pledge not to enforce its vaccine-related patents.
Moderna has filed patent infringement lawsuits against Pfizer and BioNTech on August 26th, both in the United States and Germany, where the companies are headquartered, claiming they have copied its messenger RNA (mRNA) vaccine technology.
Based in Cambridge, Massachusetts (US), Moderna came to the public’s attention in early 2020 for developing Spikevax — one of the first vaccines against COVID-19. This vaccine became Moderna’s first (and so far only) commercially available product. It also pioneered the use of mRNA technology in vaccine delivery, something the company had been developing since it was founded twelve years ago.
However, Moderna was not alone in the mRNA field. German biotechnology company BioNTech had also been researching the subject since it launched in 2008. And, in partnership with American pharmaceutical giant Pfizer, it developed its own mRNA-based vaccine against COVID-19 in 2020, named Cominarty. Which, akin to Moderna, is BioNTech’s first (and so far only) commercially available product.
Spikevax and Cominarty are fairly similar in how they work. Both vaccines use lipid…
