A U.K. Court of Appeals ruling confirms the validity of a patent covering modifications of mRNA used in Moderna’s vaccines.
The U.K. Court of Appeals has ruled in Moderna’s favor in a patent dispute between the vaccine maker and its chief competitor, Pfizer and its partner BioNTech.
The decision confirms a ruling dating to July 2024 that Moderna’s EP’949 patent is valid, and that Pfizer/BioNTech’s Comirnaty COVID-19 vaccine infringes upon it.
Moderna announced the ruling in a press release early Friday morning and confirmed it during the company’s second-quarter earnings call hours later.
“You may have seen that in the last couple of hours, the U.K. Court of Appeal issued its decision,” Moderna’s CEO Stéphane Bancel said on the call. “The court has decided to affirm the High Court finding that Moderna’s EP’949 patent is valid and infringed by Pfizer and BioNTech. Moderna will continue to pursue and enforce its patent rights globally to protect its competitive mRNA technology.”
The EP’949 patent covers modifications made to the mRNA used in COVID-19 vaccines. That modification replaces the uracil bases in mRNA with N1-methyl-pseudouridine, a modified version of the base that stabilizes the molecule and stimulates a strong immune response.
Early in the COVID-19 pandemic, in October 2020, Moderna said that it would not enforce its COVID-19–related patents. But in March 2022, the biotech updated this pledge, saying it would enforce its patents except in 92 low- or middle-income countries.
The U.K. case dates back to August 2022, when Moderna sued Pfizer and BioNTech in the U.S. and Germany (where BioNTech is based), as well as the Netherlands, Belgium and Ireland, for infringement of the EP’949 patent. Moderna’s complaint said it was entitled to damages relating to sales dating back to March 2022. In September 2022, Pfizer shot back in U.K. courts, asking for the patent to be revoked there, insisting that its own patents had been infringed.
In July 2024, an initial ruling came down in the U.K. that declared one of Moderna’s patents, EP’565, which covered a “betacoronavirus mRNA-LNP vaccine” invalid. However, it said that EP’949, the patent on modified uracils, was valid. The court gave Pfizer the option to appeal the decision, which it did.
The cases across various countries have come to varied conclusions. In March, the Düsseldorf Regional Court ruled that Moderna’s patents were valid and ordered Pfizer and BioNTech to pay damages. A few weeks later, the U.S. Patent Trial and Appeal Board ruled that three other Moderna patents around mRNA technology attempted to patent “obvious” advances and were therefore invalid.
