Big pharma firm hits back in COVID-19 tech dispute

CureVac accuses Pfizer and its German partner of infringing patented tech in landmark COVID-19 treatment | The pharma giant says that the patents are invalid

Pfizer and its German partner BioNTec have filed proceedings at the High Court of England and Wales, in a bid to revoke two patents owned by CureVac.

In early July, CureVac accused BioNTech of infringing four patents related to messenger ribonucleic acid (mRNA) technology through Pfizer and BioNTech’s COVID-19 vaccine, Comirnaty.

Filing its suit in the German Regional Court in Düsseldorf, CureVac claimed that it doesn’t intend to seek an injunction or to take legal action that would impede the production, sale or distribution of Comirnaty, but wants its IP rights need to be acknowledged and respected in the form of a “fair compensation”.

Pfizer and BioNTech hit back in late July with a filing at the US District Court for the District of Massachusetts. The complaint sought a ruling that they didn’t infringe patents owned by Germany-based CureVac and claimed that CureVac's US patents are equivalent to the German patents invoked by CureVac in its own suit.

The pair alleged that CureVac had failed to develop a COVID-19 vaccine product so had “turned its attention to an attempt to profit from the success of BioNTech and Pfizer through threats of patent infringement”.

Late last week, in a regulatory filing, the duo confirmed that they had filed proceedings in the English High Court, seeking judgment that two of CureVac’s European (UK) patents are not infringed by Comirnaty and/or are invalid and should be revoked.

According to the filing: “The COVID-19 vaccine is based on BioNTech’s proprietary mRNA technology and was developed by both BioNTech and Pfizer.”

Pfizer and BioNTech are also facing a patent suit filed by Moderna, which is alleging that the pair copied its technology when developing their COVID-19 vaccine.

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