Moderna sues Pfizer/BioNTech for patent infringement over COVID vaccine

[BumRushDaShow]

Source: Reuters

Aug 26 (Reuters) - Moderna is suing Pfizer and its German partner BioNTech 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 being filed in U.S. District Court in Massachusetts and the Regional Court of Dusseldorf in Germany, Moderna said in a news release on Friday.

"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 statement. 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. 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. Germany-based 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 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 others develop their own vaccines, particularly for low- and middle-income countries. But in March 2022 Moderna said it expected companies such as Pfizer and BioNTech to respect its intellectual property rights. It said it would not seek damages for any activity before March 8, 2022.

Read more: https://www.reuters.com/legal/moderna-sues-pfizerbiontech-patent-infringement-over-covid-vaccine-2022-08-26/

[speak easy]

1. Moderna has a superior product

= less fragile encapsulation of the RNA payload. I'm guessing this is a defensive suit.

[BumRushDaShow]

2. I know these companies borrow off of each other

but usually there are license agreements in place for it. During the height of the pandemic when their products were still under EUAs, they didn't enforce anything out of courtesy. But once the BLAs were approved and the product marketing commenced, then all bets were off!

[Magoo48]

3. The rabid greed of them all is a human embarrassment.

[mjvpi]

6. My first reaction. Global pandemic. They both had huge profits on the backs of taxpayers.

Maybe "we the people" should look closely at both company’s profit off of this. How many tax dollars over the years helped with research that led to The discovery?

[BumRushDaShow]

8. Believe it or not

vaccines are considered "loss leaders" for pharmaceutical companies and in "normal times", countries world wide and their regulatory entities, have to literally BEG them to make vaccines because pharmas make far more off their prescription drugs, biologics, and devices.

Of course COVID-19 became "the exception to the rule".

[mjvpi]

11. In a quick Google search Moderna increased sales from......

….. a measly $803 million to over $17 Billion in 2 years. Boston Globe said they had a profit of $12 Billion!. That’s “an exception to the rule”. It makes you wonder if they classify 10% to 20% as”loss leaders”. If those numbers are even close, that s an obscene profit margin. Especially during a global public health emergency. There is room to produce free vaccine for third world

Thanks for the info. I’m 64 and have seen big pharma profits explode even before Covid. They couldn’t do what they do without a steady supply of brain power provided by our education system and public/private partnerships. Public funding is what drives cutting edge research. RNMA s a prime example. Private research gives us viagra with huge profit margins. Alligator tears for the drug companies having to produce what people need.

[BumRushDaShow]

13. Well you made my point

They make more money off of everything BUT "vaccines", but COVID-19 became a game-changer. The antivirals and prophylactics add on to that.

All you have to do is look at the issue of the smallpox vaccine that is currently being used to vaccinate against monkeypox (i.e., there is NO "monkeypox vaccine" ), and the struggles of getting that small company to ramp up more doses.

And this was mainly because smallpox was declared "eradicated", so what was kept stored was sortof associated with the "just in case of bioterrorism" scenario per the 2002 Bioterrorism Act (and for occasional small outbreaks of monkeypox - although only as recently as 2019, and is just this month, authorized for an EUA for intradermal use to stretch out the doses).

So in the scheme of things, whether small pharma or big pharma, "vaccines" are at that lower end of their scale - again during normal times. But we are not in normal times!

[JudyM]

4. Interesting

I didn’t realize Moderna had developed the technology… The
BioNTech team was just using it for cancer research

… The BioNTech story took a twist when Sahin in January came across a scientific paper on a new coronavirus outbreak in the Chinese city of Wuhan and it struck him how small the step was from anti-cancer mRNA drugs to mRNA-based viral vaccines.

BioNTech quickly assigned about 500 staff to project “light speed” to work on several possible compounds, winning pharma giant Pfizer and Chinese drugmaker Fosun as partners in March.

Matthias Theobald, a fellow oncology professor at Mainz university who has worked with Sahin for 20 years, said his tendency towards understatement belies a relentless ambition to transform medicine, exemplified by the leap of faith to a COVID-19 vaccine.

https://www.reuters.com/article/health-coronavirus-biontech-ceo-newsmake/behind-pfizers-vaccine-an-understated-husband-and-wife-dream-team-idUSKBN27P1O5

[ancianita]

5. It was Moderna that Nobel Laureate Jennifer Doudna gave her mRNA patent permission to

to use in developing the covid vaccine. Her atomic mapping of RNA got her the Nobel Prize in Chemistry in 2020. Before then, Moderna had done extensive work in flu viruses but couldn't touch Covid 19 reliably.

To her, Moderna had superior lab work history in virus vaccine development, and so she joined them to use the CRISPRCas9 enzyme's RNA to pinpoint, then cut genetic code from the covid virus to create, then deliver in their vaccine delivery system (using lipids, I think).

She also knew that, as it had in the past, Moderna's labs could team up with the superior production systems of Pfizer to do mass covid vaccine production for the country and world.

That Pfizer helped itself to actual mRNA vaccine development sounds like legal overstepping, even if its source was from some paper or lab in China. Guess the jurisdiction here still holds and courts will decide.

[XorXor]

7. Not a good look for Moderna, me thinks.

It just highlights the whole profit over people attitude that we all know these companies have.

[NH Ethylene]

9. I think the fact that they waited until now to do this,

And are giving the other companies a free pass for usage prior to this past March, actually speaks well of Moderna as a company.

[mjvpi]

12. Before you give Moderna too much credit for altruism, please look at their last years profit.

The Boston Globe reports it a $12 Billion dollars. Evidently that wasn’t enough. Their research dollars will yield more from investing in a lawsuit than drug research.

[NullTuples]

10. Moderna is feeling mighty patent-troll-y

"Early in the pandemic, Moderna said it would not enforce its COVID-19 patents to help others develop their own vaccines, particularly for low- and middle-income countries. But in March 2022 Moderna said it expected companies such as Pfizer and BioNTech to respect its intellectual property rights."