Paul Schloesser
Associate Editor

CureVac is going on the offensive against Pfizer and BioNTech, saying that it will seek to accelerate its litigation around patents related to the manufacture of the Covid-19 vaccine Comirnaty.

The German biotech company announced Friday that the case, which originally launched in the US last summer, has been transferred from the federal district court of Massachusetts to the eastern district court in Virginia as part of an effort to speed up the litigation, potentially allowing for a trial as soon as next year.

On top of that transfer going through, CureVac filed a 94-page document Friday, filled with a broader counterclaims that say Pfizer and BioNTech infringed on nine of its US patents — eight of which it claims are owned by CureVac and the ninth by CureVac Manufacturing. These patents range from producing mRNA to vaccine design and manufacturing.

CureVac first filed a lawsuit against BioNTech in a German court in July 2022.

Roughly three weeks later, BioNTech shot back with a lawsuit of its own, bringing Pfizer into the fold and suing CureVac in Massachusetts federal court. That lawsuit claimed Comirnaty was not in violation of three CureVac patents initially named in a complaint.

The suit brought by BioNTech and Pfizer also asked the court to enjoin and restrict CureVac from “pursuing further assertions of infringement or acts of enforcement” related to three patents, known as the ‘312, ‘278, and ‘493 patents.

Alexander Zehnder
CureVac CEO Alexander Zehnder said in a statement Friday that the progress of litigation since last year in German court “supports CureVac’s claim to fair compensation under U.S. and German law, and a proportionate share of the approximately $80 billion in revenue that Comirnaty has generated worldwide to date and a share of future revenues.”

Pfizer and BioNTech did not respond to requests for comment before deadline.