The Tübingen company Curevac has filed a lawsuit against the corona vaccine manufacturer Biontech and two subsidiaries. It sees its patents being infringed by the competitor’s billion-fold sold corona vaccine. According to Curevac, it is about adequate compensation for an infringement of intellectual property rights. The lawsuit was brought before the District Court of Düsseldorf. It’s about four patents. Biontech initially did not want to comment, but announced a statement.
In the process, it must be clarified to what extent the respective patents went into the development of the Biontech vaccine, said Curevac boss Franz-Werner Haas. He did not say what amount Curevac envisages. This must be clarified in the process. The parties disagree on this issue after numerous discussions. According to Curevac, it does not seek an injunction and does not intend to take legal action that could hinder the production, sale or distribution of the Biontech vaccine Comirnaty.
After a promising start in mid-2021, the Tübingen-based company failed to bring a corona vaccine onto the market and now wants to be a pioneer in the development of a new second-generation vaccine with its British partner Glaxosmithkline. A clinical study of his new candidate was started at the end of March. Curevac argues the company’s intellectual property protects several inventions considered essential to Biontech’s design and development of coronavirus vaccines. These relate to the production of mRNA molecules, for example.
Curevac supported the rapid development of vaccines as an early pioneer of mRNA technology. “Accordingly, in order to invest in advancing mRNA technology and new classes of life-saving drugs, intellectual property rights must be recognized and respected in the form of fair remuneration.”
Curevac was founded in 2000 by Ingmar Hoerr. He is regarded as the discoverer of the new vaccination technique. Like the vaccines from Biontech and Moderna, it is based on so-called messenger RNA. The company is based in Tübingen and employs more than 500 people in Tübingen, Frankfurt and Boston. Hoerr retired as CEO in spring 2020 for health reasons.