Moderna Sues Pfizer Over mRNA Technology Used in COVID Vaccines
Moderna said Friday that it’s suing Pfizer and BioNTech, alleging that the companies copied its mRNA technology, the revolutionary vaccination scheme used in Pfizer’s and Moderna’s COVID-19 vaccines.
Between 2010 and 2016, Moderna said it marched patents that covered “foundational mRNA technology” that Pfizer and its German partner, BioNTech, copied without permission in order to make their COVID-19 vaccine.
“We are filing these lawsuits to protecting the innovative mRNA technology platform that we pioneered, invested billions of bucks in creating, and patented during the decade preceding the COVID-19 pandemic,” Moderna Chief Executive Officer Stéphane Bancel said in a uninteresting release. “This foundational platform, which we began building in 2010, behind with our patented work on coronaviruses in 2015 and 2016, enabled us to beget a safe and highly effective COVID-19 vaccine in portray time after the pandemic struck.”
In a statement to CNET, Pfizer said that the commercial and BioNTech haven’t fully reviewed the complaint yet, but that they’re “surprised” by the litigation, given that the Pfizer/BioNTech vaccine was “based on BioNTech’s proprietary mRNA technology and developed by both BioNTech and Pfizer.”
“We been confident in our intellectual property supporting the Pfizer/BioNTech vaccine and will vigorously protecting against the allegations of the lawsuit,” Pfizer said.
Moderna and Pfizer and BioNTech have been neck and neck in the race for regulatory approval in the US. The US Food and Drug Administration signed Pfizer’s COVID-19 vaccine for emergency use one week beforehand Moderna’s in December 2020. This week, Moderna submitted its application to the FDA for its new COVID-19 booster that targets omicron’s BA.5 subvariant one day when Pfizer and BioNTech announced their submission.
The mRNA vaccines work by teaching our cells how to form an immune response to a virus. Moderna said in its announcement that Pfizer and BioNTech copied two key features of mRNA technology, including chemical modification and encoding for the spike protein, which Moderna said it began working on in 2010.
Moderna said it’s not asking Pfizer and BioNTech to take its vaccine off the market anywhere or maintain its future sale, but that it expects the concerns to “compensate Moderna” for ongoing use of the vaccine outside of lower- or middle-income states where vaccine supply is no longer an issue. Moderna said it’s not seeking compensations from the other vaccine companies in 92 lower- or middle-income states, and that it’s also not seeking damages for Pfizer’s sales where the US government would be responsible for the compensations, or for activities prior to March 8, 2022.
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