Moderna has filed a lawsuit against Pfizer and BioNTech, accusing the companies of patent infringement over the COVID-19 vaccine.
Not the vaccine companies are tussling! This past Friday, Modern announced its lawsuit against its vaccine developer competitors Pfizer and BioNTech. In the suit, Moderna claims the companies ripped off Moderna’s technology to create their COVID-19 vaccine Comirnaty, which is what Pfizer and BioNTech Coronavirus vaccine is marketed as.
From Modena’s end, it claims they filed two patents, one in 2010 and the other in 2016. Both patents were for its mRNA technology, which is the key part in the creation of its COVID-19 vaccine, NBC News reports. They say Pfizer and BioNTech copied their process and used it for their own vaccine.
“We believe that Pfizer and BioNTech unlawfully copied Moderna’s inventions, and they have continued to use them without permission,” Moderna Chief Legal Officer Shannon Thyme Klinger said in a statement, NBC News reports.
According to a news release, the suit was filed in the U.S. District Court for the District of Massachusetts and the Regional Court of Düsseldorf in Germany. Pfizer denied Moderna’s claims saying: “We remain confident in our intellectual property supporting the Pfizer/BioNTech vaccine and will vigorously defend against the allegations of the lawsuit.”
