Moderna sues Pfizer, BioNTech for patent infringement with COVID-19 vaccine

Aug. 26 (UPI) -- Biotech company Moderna announced Friday that it's suing pharma giant Pfizer and partner BioNTech because they copied patented technologies to create their COVID-19 vaccine, which was the first one to be authorized.

Moderna argues that the companies infringed on patents covering mRNA technology that was used in both Moderna's and Pfizer's vaccines.

The suit says Pfizer and COVID-19 vaccine partner BioNTech copied the technology without Moderna's permission -- specifically, patents that Moderna filed years ago for technology that ultimately helped produce it's coronavirus vaccine in 2020.

The Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine was the first one to be authorized and administered in the United States, in December 2020. Emergency authorization for Moderna's vaccine came about a week later.

The suit was filed in U.S. and German courts.

"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 Stephane Bancel said in a statement Friday.

"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."

Moderna said its patented technologies are being used to develop medicines and treat cancer and infectious diseases like HIV and influenza.

The biotech firm says Pfizer and BioNTech copied its approach to encode "the full-length spike protein in a lipid nanoparticle formulation for a coronavirus."

"And they knowingly followed Moderna's lead in developing their own vaccine," the company said in a statement.

Moderna says it didn't seek to enforce the patents for more than a year due to the nature of the global COVID-19 emergency, and added that it isn't seeking any legal recourse in almost 100 low- and middle-income countries if the patents were copied there.

Both vaccines from Moderna and Pfizer-BioNTech use mRNA to fight the coronavirus in patients. The mRNA technology allows cells in the body to make copies of the COVID-19 spike protein, which teaches those cells to fight off the real virus.

Neither Pfizer nor BioNTech immediately responded to the suit.