The team behind Britain’s most widely used Covid booster vaccine is being sued by a German pharmaceutical firm, which has accused it of stealing the technology behind the injection.
CureVac has filed a lawsuit against BioNTech in Germany, saying it is seeking “just compensation” for infringement of its intellectual property rights related to the mRNA technology used in the vaccine.
It comes a year after CureVac abandoned its own efforts to develop a Covid vaccine after late-stage trials suggested it was less effective than rival vaccines already on the market. At the time, CureVac’s chief executive, Franz-Werner Hass, said it would instead focus on a “more effective” second-generation Covid vaccine with GlaxoSmithKline, “rather than very late with the first generation”.
In filing the lawsuit, CureVac said it did not want to stop BioNTech from making or selling the vaccine and that it “considers the rapid development of these vaccines a tremendous achievement with an unprecedented positive impact on global public health.”
A spokesperson said: “This achievement builds on decades of research and innovation, supported by CureVac as the earliest pioneer in mRNA technology.
“Accordingly, CureVac’s intellectual property rights should be recognized and respected in the form of fair compensation for reinvestment in the further advancement of mRNA technology and the continued development of new classes of life-saving drugs.” Mr Haas told the Financial Times that BioNTech “stands on our shoulders a bit.”
He added: “There is no way we can do it [the lawsuit] earlier, in the middle of the development of this product, because the vaccine was necessary for the world to become what is normal now.
Messenger RNA (mRNA) vaccines use a technology that delivers a small piece of genetic code through a tiny fat bubble, which then tricks the body into producing coronavirus proteins so the immune system can learn how to respond to the virus. No vaccines based on mRNA technology were approved before the pandemic.
Pfizer and BioNTech’s Covid vaccine is among the most widely used in the world and has helped launch a UK booster. Of the 38.9 million booster shots given in the UK up to June 15, 30.5 million were Pfizer-BioNTech vaccines.
This led to a significant increase in sales for both companies, with BioNTech earlier this year saying it had made between €16 billion (£13.8 billion) and €17 billion in revenue from the vaccine in 2021. It said that is on track to make between €13 billion and €17 billion in revenue from Covid injections this year – with profits to be spent on new vaccines and cancer treatments.
CureVac, meanwhile, saw losses widen last year, reaching 412 million euros in 2021, compared with 110 million euros a year earlier. Its shares are down 74% since August 2020 after collapsing after it announced it was scrapping its first Covid vaccine last October. The UK had originally ordered 50 million doses of the CureVac vaccine, while the EU had struck a deal for more than 400 million doses of the vaccine – before work on that original shot was abandoned by CureVac.
CureVac will be hoping for a boost from its Covid variant vaccine, which it said in April showed promising signs. The vaccine, based on the Beta and Delta variants, showed “protective efficacy” when tested in mice, the release said.
BioNTech responded to the lawsuit by saying it values and respects valid intellectual property rights. A spokesperson said: “BioNTech’s work is original and we will vigorously defend it against all allegations of patent infringement.
“However, we are aware that it is not unusual for other companies in the pharmaceutical industry, having witnessed the success of Comirnaty, to now suggest that the vaccine potentially infringes their intellectual property rights.”
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