BioNTech sues Moderna for patent infringement over COVID-19 shots

FILE: A doctor injects vaccination against the coronavirus and the COVID-19 disease to a man. (AP Photo/Markus Schreiber)

German biopharmaceutical company BioNTech sued Moderna in Delaware federal court on Thursday, alleging that Moderna’s COVID-19 shot mNEXSPIKE infringes a patent related to COVID vaccine technology.

The lawsuit said that mNEXSPIKE, Moderna’s next-generation COVID shot approved by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration in 2025, violates BioNTech’s rights in technology for a streamlined messenger RNA-based vaccine design that can be given to patients at a lower dosage.

Moderna sued BioNTech and its partner Pfizer for patent infringement over their COVID shot Comirnaty in 2022, in a lawsuit that is ongoing. The cases are among a wave of patent lawsuits from biotech companies seeking royalties for the technology used in the blockbuster vaccines.

A Moderna spokesperson said that the company would defend itself against BioNTech’s case. BioNTech said in a statement that it sued to “protect its mRNA-based innovations that the company has pioneered and patented.”

Spokespeople for Pfizer, which is not directly involved in the lawsuit, did not immediately comment.

The mNEXSPIKE shot is expected to account for 55 per cent of Moderna’s COVID vaccine revenue through the 2025-26 respiratory virus season, BioNTech’s lawsuit said.

COVID vaccine revenues have dropped sharply since the height of the pandemic, when Moderna’s Spikevax and Pfizer and BioNTech’s Comirnaty earned the companies billions in revenue. Vaccine revenues in general have also slumped since U.S. President Donald Trump’s appointment of vaccine skeptic Robert F. Kennedy Jr. as health secretary.

Reporting by Blake Brittain in Washington; Editing by Barbara Lewis, Deepa Babington and David Goodman, Reuters