Moderna sues Pfizer over mRNA technology that is used in COVID vaccines.
Moderna Sues Pfizer over mRNA Technology
Reports coming in now claim that Moderna is suing both Pfizer and BioNTech over the patents that the company said it filed some years ago on the life-saving piece of technology.
Moderna on Friday said that it is suing BioNTech and Pfizer and at that alleging that both companies copied its mRNA technology which is the revolutionary vaccination method that is used in Moderna’s and Pfizer’s COVID-19 vaccines.
Moderna said that between 2010 and 2016 it files patents that covered ‘foundational mRNA technology’ that Pfizer and BioNTech, its German partner copied without permission in a bid to make their very own COVID-19 vaccine.
Chief Executive Officer of Moderna Press Release
“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,” chief executive officer of Moderna Stephan Bancel in a press release said. “This foundational platform, which we began building in 2010, along with our patented work on coronaviruses in 2015 and 2016, enabled us to produce a safe and highly effective COVID-19 vaccine in record time after the pandemic struck.”
What Pfizer Said To CNET in Regards to the Lawsuit
Pfizer in a statement to CNET said that the company and BioNTech have not reviewed the complaint yet fully but that they are however surprised by the lawsuit given that the BioNTech/Pfizer vaccine was “based on BioNTech’s proprietary mRNA technology and developed by both BioNTech and Pfizer.”
Pfizer said ‘”we remain confident in our intellectual property supporting the Pfizer/BioNTech vaccine and will vigorously defend against the allegations of the lawsuit.”
Moderna and Pfizer and BioNTech have been neck and neck in the pursuit of regulatory approval in the United States. The US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) authorized Pfizer’s COVID-19 vaccine for emergency use one week before Moderna’s in December 2020. And this week, Moderna submitted its application to the FDA for its new COVID-19 booster that directly targets omicron’s BA.5 subvariant one day after both Pfizer and BioNTech announced their own submission.
How do the mRNA Vaccines Work
The mRNA vaccines simply work by teaching our cells how to create an immune response to a virus. Moderna in its announcement said that Pfizer and BioNTech copied two very important features of mRNA technology, and this is including chemical modification and encoding for the spike protein, which Moderna said it started working on in 2010.
What Does Modern Wish to Achieve With the Lawsuit
Moderna said that it is not asking BioNTech and Pfizer to take its vaccine off of the market of stop its sales of it in the future, but it, however, expects both companies to ‘compensate Moderna’ for the ongoing use of the vaccine outside of lower or middle-income countries where the supply of vaccine is no longer a problem.
The company (Moderna) said that it is not also seeking damages from the other vaccine companies in 92 lower- or middle-income countries and regions and also that it is not selling damages for the sales of Pfizer where the united states government would be held responsible for the damages or for the activities prior to march 8, 2022.
