Moderna sues Pfizer/BioNTech for patent infringement over COVID vaccine

Aug 26 (Reuters) – Moderna sued Pfizer and its German partner BioNTech on Friday for patent infringement in the development of the first COVID-19 vaccine approved in the United States, alleging they copied technology that Moderna developed years before the pandemic.

The lawsuit, which seeks undetermined monetary damages, was filed in U.S. District Court in Massachusetts. In a news release on Friday, Moderna said the lawsuit would be filed also in the Regional Court of Duesseldorf in Germany.

“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 Chief Executive Stephane Bancel said in the news release.

Moderna said its lawsuit was not meant to stop people from getting vaccines.

Moderna Inc (MRNA.O), on its own, and the partnership of Pfizer Inc (PFE.N) and BioNTech SE (22UAy.DE) were two of the first groups to develop a vaccine for the novel coronavirus.

Pfizer said the company was confident in its intellectual property and would vigorously defend against the allegations.

“We are surprised by the litigation given the COVID-19 vaccine was based on BioNTech’s proprietary mRNA technology and developed by both BioNTech and Pfizer,” a Pfizer spokesperson said in an emailed statement.

BioNTech did not immediately reply to separate requests for comment.

Just a decade old, Moderna, based in Cambridge, Massachusetts, had been an innovator in the messenger RNA (mRNA) vaccine technology that enabled the unprecedented speed in developing the COVID-19 vaccine.

An approval process that previously took years was completed in months, thanks largely to the breakthrough in mRNA vaccines, which teach human cells how to make a protein that will trigger an immune response.

BioNTech had also been working in this field when it partnered with the U.S. pharma giant Pfizer.

The U.S. Food and Drug Administration granted emergency use authorization for the COVID-19 vaccine first to Pfizer/BioNTech in December 2020, then one week later to Moderna.

Moderna’s COVID vaccine – its lone commercial product – has brought in $10.4 billion in revenue this year while Pfizer’s vaccine brought in about $22 billion.

Moderna is seeking royalty payments based on sales after March 8, 2022, and excluding sales to the U.S. government or to low-income countries.

If it ultimately prevails, the royalty in such cases is usually a “high single digit” percentage of sales, according to Jacob Sherkow, a University of Illinois College of Law professor who specializes in biotech intellectual property issues.

Wall Street analysts expect the dispute to take years.

Moderna alleges Pfizer/BioNTech, without permission, copied mRNA technology that Moderna had patented between 2010 and 2016, well before COVID-19 emerged in 2019 and exploded into global consciousness in early 2020.

Early in the pandemic, Moderna said it would not enforce its COVID-19 patents to help…