Pfizer and Moderna get into legal tussle over COVID vaccine patents

Tussle over COVID drug: Drugmakers Pfizer and BioNTech have asked a London court to revoke rival Moderna's patents over technology key to the development of vaccines for COVID-19, as a fresh round of a global legal battle began on Tuesday.

Pfizer and its German partner BioNTech sued Moderna at London's High Court in September 2022. The duo had sought to revoke patents held by Moderna, which hit back days later alleging its patents had been infringed.

The competing lawsuits over Pfizer and its German partner BioNTech’s  two vaccines, which proved instrumental in saving millions of lives and helped the companies generate revenue worth billions of dollars, are just one strand of ongoing litigation around the world which focuses on messenger RNA (mRNA) technology.

Moderna has alleged that Pfizer and BioNTech copied mRNA advances it had pioneered and patented well before the COVID-19 pandemic began in late 2019.

The American drug maker Moderna is seeking damages for alleged infringement of its patents by Pfizer and BioNTech's Comirnaty shot on sales since March 2022.

Pfizer saw $11.2 billion in sales from Comirnaty in 2023, while Moderna earned $6.7 billion from its vaccine Spikevax, underlining the potentially huge sums at stake.

(With PTI inputs)