Moderna scores European victory over Pfizer and BioNTech in mRNA patent battle

The Eu­ro­pean Patent Of­fice on Thurs­day hand­ed a win to Mod­er­na in a long-run­ning patent bat­tle with Pfiz­er and BioN­Tech over cer­tain com­po­nents of the mR­NA vac­cines au­tho­rized to fight Covid-19.

“We are pleased to an­nounce that the Eu­ro­pean Patent Of­fice de­cid­ed to main­tain the va­lid­i­ty of Mod­er­na’s EP949 patent, one of the key patents cur­rent­ly as­sert­ed against Pfiz­er and BioN­Tech in var­i­ous Eu­ro­pean na­tion­al courts,” Mod­er­na said in an emailed state­ment. “While we an­tic­i­pate that the op­po­nents will ap­peal this de­ci­sion, we ap­pre­ci­ate the dili­gent re­view and thor­ough un­der­stand­ing of the sci­en­tif­ic and le­gal is­sues demon­strat­ed by the EPO Op­po­si­tion Di­vi­sion dur­ing the oral pro­ceed­ings.”

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