The agricultural and pharmaceutical company Bayer has sued the corona vaccine manufacturers Pfizer, Biontech and Moderna for possible infringement of patents on their mRNA vaccines. A Bayer spokesman confirmed corresponding lawsuits in a federal court in Delaware on Tuesday. According to the accusation, the manufacturers are said to have copied a technology that the Bayer subsidiary Monsanto had already applied for a patent in the 1980s. This is a process for stabilizing the genetic material mRNA, which Monsanto originally used to develop more resilient crops.
Bayer also filed a similar lawsuit against the US company Johnson & Johnson in a federal court in New Jersey. Bayer is demanding undisclosed damages. However, Bayer said there is no intention to ban the sale of the vaccines. The company has not been involved in the development of Covid vaccines and does not produce them.
The lawsuits are part of a series of disputes over patents surrounding the successful corona vaccines. Moderna had already filed a lawsuit against Pfizer in 2022. Pfizer and Biontech achieved global sales of more than 2024 with their Comirnaty vaccine
3.3 billion dollars. Moderna
raised $3.2 billion with Spikevax. However, this is only a fraction of sales at the height of the pandemic. Johnson & Johnson stopped selling its Covid vaccine in the USA in 2023.
