Moderna said in a statement on Friday that it is suing Pfizer and its German partner BioNTech for patent infringement while developing the first COVID-19 vaccine approved in the United States.

The American pharmaceutical and biotechnology company based in Cambridge, Massachusetts, alleges its rivals copied technology that Moderna developed years before the pandemic.

The lawsuit, which doesn't set out any specific financial compensation, was being filed in a US District Court in Massachusetts and the Regional Court of Düsseldorf in Germany, Moderna said.

Last month, German pharmaceutical firm CureVac also announced it was suing BioNTech for alleged infringements involving four patents.

Why is Moderna suing?

"Moderna believes that Pfizer and BioNTech's COVID-19 vaccine Comirnaty infringes patents Moderna filed between 2010 and 2016 covering Moderna's foundational mRNA technology," the biopharmaceutical company said in a statement.

"We are filing these lawsuits to protect the innovative mRNA technology platform that we pioneered, invested billions of dollars in creating, and patented during the decade preceding the COVID-19 pandemic," Moderna Chief Executive Stephane Bancel said in the statement.

What is mRNA?

The mRNA technology deployed in the Moderna and BioNTech-Pfizer shots differs from those used in traditional vaccines, which rely on injecting weakened or dead forms of a virus to allow the immune system to recognize it and get used to it by building antibodies.

Instead, mRNA vaccines deliver instructions to cells to build a harmless piece of the spike protein found on the surface of the virus. After creating this spike protein, cells can then recognize and deal with the actual virus. 

jsi/fb (Reuters, AFP)