The American laboratory Moderna launched a major legal battle against Pfizer and BioNTech on Friday, accusing them of infringing patents on technologies essential to its messenger RNA vaccine against Covid-19 (AFP / DOMINICK REUTER, Joseph Prezioso)
The American laboratory Moderna launched a major legal battle against Pfizer and BioNTech on Friday, accusing them of infringing patents on technologies essential to its messenger RNA vaccine against Covid-19.
“Moderna is convinced that Pfizer and BioNTech’s Comirnaty vaccine against Covid-19 infringes patents filed by Moderna between 2010 and 2016,” said a statement from the firm.
But the company also seems to want to keep control of technologies that can be used in many other contexts, Moderna stressing that it uses its platform of technologies related to messenger RNA for the development of treatments against influenza, HIV, autoimmune diseases and cardiovascular and cancers.
Moderna and Pfizer associated with BioNTech were the first to put their vaccines against the coronavirus into production, very quickly after the start of the pandemic, thanks to this messenger RNA technology which allows human cells to be ordered to manufacture proteins present in the virus in order to train the immune system to recognize and neutralize it.
Until then, vaccines relied on weakened or inactivated forms of the virus to train the body to defend itself, and the development of remedies, as well as clinical trials to verify their safety, could take several years.
The use of messenger RNA technology in Moderna and Pfizer/BioNTech’s vaccines, among the most injected in the world, was the culmination of four decades of research that has overcome many obstacles.
The flexibility afforded by messenger RNA and the ability to make the body itself produce antigens make it possible to expect a lot from it for other diseases.
Moderna said it was filing a complaint today in the state of Massachusetts in the United States and in Düsseldorf in Germany.
– Financial compensation –
The resolution of such a case in court can take several years.
Pfizer/BioNTech stressed in a message sent to AFP on Friday that it had not yet fully examined the complaint. But the two companies said they were “surprised by the litigation” given that the Pfizer/BioNTech Covid-19 vaccine “is based on BioNTech’s proprietary messenger RNA technology and was developed by both BioNTech and Pfizer. “. They said they were prepared to defend themselves “vigorously” against the allegations in Moderna’s complaint.
This is not the first patent infringement lawsuit on innovative messenger RNA technology.
Moderna, for example, is already being sued by small biotech companies Arbutus Biopharma Corporation and Genevant Sciences. BioNTech is also concerned by a complaint in Germany from its compatriot CureVac, to which BioNTech and Pfizer responded by another procedure in the United States.
“We are initiating these lawsuits to protect the innovative messenger RNA technology platform that we pioneered, invested billions of dollars in and patented in the decade before the Covid-19 pandemic,” commented the boss of Moderna, Stéphane Bancel, in the press release.
Moderna stresses that it has committed, as of October 2020, not to launch any intellectual property lawsuits while the pandemic is raging, but believes that it has now moved to a new stage.
The company is not asking that Pfizer/BioNTech withdraw its vaccine from the market. But she is asking for financial compensation, and only for vaccines sold since March.
Pfizer plans to sell $32 billion worth of its Covid-19 vaccine for the whole of 2022.
Moderna also specifies that the patents for which it is suing Pfizer and BioNTech were not developed when the company was collaborating with the American public research agency to accelerate work in the fight against Covid-19.
© 2022 AFP
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