Moderna Sues Pfizer and BioNTech Over Covid Vaccine Technology

In two lawsuits on Friday, Moderna claimed that Pfizer and its development partner, BioNTech, had infringed on three patents that Moderna filed between 2011 and 2016 related to its mRNA technology. One lawsuit was filed in U.S. District Court in Massachusetts, where Moderna is based, and the other in Germany, home to BioNTech.

Jerica Pitts, a spokeswoman for Pfizer, said Pfizer and BioNTech were “surprised by the litigation” and “remain confident” in their intellectual property supporting the vaccine. BioNTech said in a statement that its “work is original, and we will vigorously defend against all allegations of patent infringement.”

Moderna is seeking damages, which could include royalties and lost profits, incurred since March, when the company said it would begin enforcing its Covid-related patents in wealthier countries after previously pledging not to do so during the pandemic emergency. Moderna’s lawsuits said the company would not seek damages from Pfizer’s sales of its shot to the world’s poorest countries. They also said the company would not pursue any damages that would be the responsibility of the U.S. government, which has bought hundreds of millions of doses of the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine.

Christopher Ridley, a spokesman for Moderna, said that the company would leave the amount of the damages for the courts to decide and that it would not give an estimate. But Jacob S. Sherkow, an expert on biotechnology patent law at the University of Illinois College of Law, estimated that if Moderna’s litigation succeeded, Pfizer might be forced to pay tens of millions of dollars in damages — a small fraction of the overall sales for its Covid vaccine, which reached a record $36.8 billion in 2021.

Article source: https://www.nytimes.com/2022/08/26/business/moderna-covid-vaccine-lawsuit.html