“Moderna believes that the COVID-19 vaccine from Pfizer and BioNTech, Comirnaty, infringes on patents Moderna filed between 2010 and 2016 for Moderna’s fundamental mRNA technology. This breakthrough technology was critical to the development from Spikevax, Moderna’s proprietary mRNA COVID-19 vaccine. Pfizer and BioNTech copied this technology, without Moderna’s consent, to create Comirnaty,” the press release said.
Pfizer has not been served and is unable to comment at this time, a company spokesperson told CNN.
Moderna said in the press release that it does not seek to remove Pfizer’s vaccine from the market or prevent future sales of its vaccine, nor is it seeking damages from sales in specific circumstances.
Those circumstances include the sale of the vaccines in AMC 92 countries that constitute low- and middle-income countries, including in cases where “the U.S. government would be responsible for any damages” and for operations before March 8, 2022.
In line with its commitment to equitable global access, Moderna pledged in October 2020 not to enforce its COVID-19-related patents while the pandemic continued. In March 2022, as the collective fight against COVID-19 entered a new phase and the supply of vaccines no longer a barrier to entry in many parts of the world, moderna updated its pledge and made it clear that while it would never enforce its patents on any COVID-19 vaccine used in the 92 low- and middle-income countries in the GAVI COVAX Advance Market Commitment (AMC 92), Moderna expected companies such as Pfizer and BioNTech to respect their intellectual property rights and consider a commercially reasonable license if they applied for a license for other markets. Pfizer and BioNTech have not done so.” , the statement said. .
Moderna also outlined specific cases where the company alleges Pfizer has infringed its patents, saying the company was making progress with “a vaccine that has the same exact chemical mRNA modification in its vaccine as Spikevax. Scientists at Moderna started developing this vaccine.” chemical modification that triggers an unwanted immune response when mRNA is introduced into the body in 2010 and were the first to validate it in human trials in 2015.”
Moderna also says: “Pfizer and BioNTech have copied Moderna’s approach to encode the full-length spike protein in a lipid nanoparticle formulation for a coronavirus. Moderna scientists developed this approach when they developed a vaccine for the coronavirus that affects the Middle East Respiratory Syndrome (MERS) caused years before COVID-19 first emerged.”
Moderna and Pfizer’s mRNA Covid-19 vaccines formed the backbone of the US vaccination strategy, with Pfizer making up the majority of the doses administered.
As of Friday morning, 360,175,884 million doses of Pfizer’s Covid-19 vaccine were administered and 229,236,868 doses of Moderna were administered in the US.
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