With the ruling, the court upheld a lawsuit brought by Mainz competitor Biontech against the Tübingen pharmaceutical company Curevac. Curevac can appeal the judgment to the Federal Court of Justice.
The Federal Patent Court has declared a basic corona vaccine patent from the Tübingen pharmaceutical company Curevac invalid. On Tuesday, the court upheld a lawsuit brought by Mainz competitor Biontech against Curevac. The Tübingen-based company’s shares subsequently lost a good third of their value.
Curevac announced that it would appeal to the Federal Court of Justice. The company applied for the disputed patent in 2007 and was granted it by the European Patent Office for 20 countries in 2010. This is about a method of overcoming the disadvantages of vaccines with the messenger molecule mRNA and increasing their effectiveness.
The Federal Patent Court has now declared it invalid in Germany. Other national patent courts often follow the decisions of the Munich judges.
It’s about a lot of money
The Munich proceedings are only part of the dispute between the two companies – but a very crucial one. Curevac sued Biontech and its US partner Pfizer for damages at the Düsseldorf regional court in July 2022 for alleged infringement of several of its patents. Curevac is demanding “fair compensation” for the violation of its intellectual property rights, which Biontech and Pfizer are said to have used in the successful production of their corona vaccine.
The dispute is about a lot of money: Biontech made a profit of 10.3 billion euros in 2021, and the bottom line in 2022 was 9.4 billion euros.
In return, Biontech sued the Federal Patent Court in Munich and successfully demanded that a fundamental Curevac patent be declared invalid. It is not based on an invention. The Düsseldorf regional court has postponed the proceedings there until December 28th to await the decision of the federal judges.
Curevac failed to bring a corona vaccine onto the market in time. However, the company claims to have developed basic technologies that have made a significant contribution to the development of effective Covid-19 vaccines: It was “a pioneer in discovering the potential of mRNA for the treatment of diseases and the production of vaccines”.
Patents in the USA and Germany
Biontech welcomed the decision of the Federal Patent Court. It makes it clear “that our research work is original”. Biontech developed the world’s first approved Covid-19 vaccine, Comirnaty, in 2020. This made it possible to vaccinate more than a billion people worldwide.
After the outbreak of the corona pandemic in 2020, the German state also invested in Curevac. However, the company with a good 1,000 employees was unable to produce a corona vaccine. It does not yet have a commercially approved product and is in the red.
According to Curevac, the dispute with Biontech and Pfizer in Germany involves eight patents. In the USA, where a large part of the corona vaccine was produced, there are ten patents.
Meanwhile, the market for Covid-19 vaccines has collapsed. Biontech is also struggling with shrinking sales. US partner Pfizer had to write off billions on its inventories and slipped into the red in the last quarter. The US manufacturer Moderna, which was also launching a corona vaccine, reported a billion-dollar loss for the third quarter.
Source: Stern
