In the lawsuit, Moderna sues Pfizer and BioNTech copied technology that Moderna developed years before the pandemic.
Moderna (NASDAQ:MRNA)
Moderna sues Pfizer
Pfizer (NYSE:PFE) and BioNTech (NASDAQ:BNTX), two competing producers of the COVID-19 vaccine, are being sued by Moderna (NASDAQ:MRNA) for violating the company’s messenger RNA technology patents.
According to a news release from Moderna on Friday, the case was filed in the U.S. District Court in Massachusetts and the Regional Court of Düsseldorf in Germany. It demands unspecified monetary damages.
Prior to Moderna, Pfizer (PFE) and BioNTech (BNTX) dominated the U.S. market for COVID-19 vaccines (MRNA). The cases will be brought before the Regional Court of Düsseldorf in Germany as well as the Massachusetts U.S. District Court.
The Comirnaty COVID-19 vaccine was created by Pfizer (PFE) and BioNTech (BNTX), and Moderna (MRNA) claims that this violates patents the firm filed between 2010 and 2016 that cover the mRNA technology.
“The creation of Moderna’s own mRNA COVID-19 vaccine, Spikevax, depended heavily on this ground-breaking technique. Without Moderna’s consent, Pfizer and BioNTech cloned this technology to create Comirnaty, “the biotech company from Massachusetts added.
Heated competition in the vaccine industry
The likelihood of a legal dispute between the producers of mRNA vaccines highlights the significant stakes in the rivalry between Pfizer, a major global pharmaceutical company, and Moderna, a startup biotechnology company based in Massachusetts. Despite never having sold a product before, Moderna got last-minute approval from the Food and Drug Administration for their coronavirus vaccine in late 2020.
Since its foundation in 2010, Moderna has been researching on developing RNA vaccines. At the start of the pandemic, Pfizer teamed up with BioNTech, another technology pioneer. As the coronavirus expanded in 2020, sickening hundreds of millions of people and destroying economies—the virus has now claimed the lives of 6.4 million people worldwide—both businesses created vaccines in a record-breaking amount of time.
Legal battles among vaccine giants
In the early stages of new technology, patent litigation is not unusual. Numerous lawsuits have already been filed against Pfizer and BioNTech by businesses that claim the vaccine developed by the partnership violates their patents. According to Pfizer/BioNTech, they will zealously protect their patents.
For instance, in July, the German company CureVac also sued BioNTech there. In a statement in response, BioNTech claimed that its work was unique.
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Author Jowi Kwasu 
