Moderna announced Friday it is suing Pfizer and its German partner BioNTech, alleging the two companies copied Moderna’s technology in its development of their COVID-19 vaccine Comirnaty.
Moderna said in a news release that Pfizer and BioNTech infringed on patents filed between 2010 and 2016 covering its mRNA technology, which Moderna used to develop its own COVID-19 vaccine, Spikevax.
“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. As we work to combat health challenges moving forward, Moderna 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.”
The patent infringement lawsuits were filed in the U.S. District Court for the District of Massachusetts and the Regional Court of Düsseldorf in Germany, according to a news release.
Both shots used messenger RNA, or mRNA, technology, a new way of developing and delivering vaccines faster and easier, compared to the traditional process of growing viruses or pieces of viruses — often in giant vats of cells or, like most flu shots, in chicken eggs — and then purifying them before next steps in brewing shots.
MRNA vaccines work by introducing a messenger RNA molecule into your body, which causes cells to produce a protein that resembles one of the viral proteins that make up SARS-CoV-2.
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