The American laboratory Moderna launched a major legal battle against Pfizer and BioNTech on Friday August 26, accusing them of having infringed patents on technologies essential to its messenger RNA vaccine against Covid-19.
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“Moderna is convinced that the Pfizer and BioNTech Comirnaty vaccine against Covid-19 infringes patents filed by Moderna between 2010 and 2016”. This was indicated by the firm in a press release on Friday August 26. Moderna filed a complaint in the State of Massachusetts (USA) and in Düsseldorf (Germany). The American laboratory Moderna is convinced that the vaccine developed by Pfizer infringes two of its patents, which the company filed in 2010 and 2016, long before the Covid-19 pandemic. He believes that his main competitor copied his messenger RNA technology to manufacture his drug.
But Moderna is not calling for the withdrawal of Pfizer’s vaccine from the market. The company is asking for financial compensation. This market is phenomenal since 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 makes it possible to order human cells to manufacture proteins present in the virus in order to accustom 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 therefore the culmination of four decades of research that overcame many obstacles.
For the current year, Pfizer forecasts revenue of $32 billion. And then, it’s a promising market. Moderna also seems to want to keep control of technologies that can be used in many other contexts. The company has said it wants to use its platform of messenger RNA technologies for the development of treatments for influenza, HIV, autoimmune and cardiovascular diseases as well as cancers.
For their part, Pfizer and BioNtech replied that their vaccine was the result of their own research and said they were surprised by this complaint.