GSK sues Moderna over mRNA vaccine patents, seeks ‘reasonable royalty’

GSK said it’s looking to recover “a reasonable royalty” for Moderna’s tens of billions in infringing sales of mRNA vaccines, following similar legal moves made against Pfizer and BioNTech last April.

The UK-based company previously said it was owed a portion of Pfizer and BioNTech’s Covid-19 vaccine sales due to patent infringement, claiming Pfizer and BioNTech benefited from mRNA research conducted more than a decade before the pandemic.

GSK said in both suits that it secured the patents to those discoveries in 2015, when it acquired a portion of Novartis’ vaccines business.

“Working under the leadership of vaccinologist Christian Mandl (the ‘Mandl team’), these talented individuals discovered, inter alia, lipid formulations encapsulating mRNA molecules encoding viral protein immunogens that, following administration, provide protection against infection by the corresponding virus,” GSK alleges. “The Mandl team described the inventions now claimed in the Patents-in-Suit, in patent applications filed in 2010.”

From its vaccine Spikevax, Moderna reported more than $24 billion in global revenue in 2022 and 2023, the suit says. A Moderna spokesperson said the company “is aware of the litigation and will defend ourselves against these claims.”

Alnylam also sued both Moderna and Pfizer in 2022 and 2023 related to their vaccine patents.

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