Moderna Sues Pfizer-BioNTech For Infringement Of Patent Infringement Of COVID-19 Vaccine Development

JAKARTA - The pharmaceutical company from the United States, Moderna, has stated that it is suing Pfizer-BioNTech regarding patent infringement in the development of a COVID-19 vaccine.

The company claims that Pfizer-BioNTech copied the messenger RNA (mRNA) technology it had developed years before the coronavirus pandemic.

"We filed this lawsuit to protect the innovative mRNA technology platform we pioneered, invested billions of dollars in manufacturing, and patented during the decade before the COVID-19 pandemic," said Moderna CEO Stephane Bancel.

Moderna accused Pfizer-BioNTech, without permission, of copying technology that Moderna had patented between 2010 and 2016, long before COVID appeared in 2019.

The Cambridge, Massachusetts-based company has been an innovator in mRNA vaccine technology enabling unprecedented speed in developing a COVID-19 vaccine.

Legal actions seeking damages, which have yet to be determined, were filed in the US district court in Massachusetts and the Dusseldorf regional court in Germany, Moderna said.

Moderna, in partnership with Pfizer Inc and BioNTech SE, were two of the first groups to develop a vaccine for the novel coronavirus.