At this time in 2020, the world's top pharmaceutical companies were racing to find a potentially life-saving vaccine for COVID-19.
Now, Moderna has filed a lawsuit against other big COVID-19 vaccine makers, Pfizer and BioNTech, over the technology used to make those vaccines possible in the first place.
Moderna is suing Pfizer in both the U.S. and Germany, although it's not seeking to kill the competition's vaccine sales in lower-income countries. Instead, it wants Pfizer to "respect its intellectual property rights" in wealthier countries around the world.
"Pfizer and BioNTech copied this technology, without Moderna's permission," the pharmaceutical company said in a statement Friday.
Moderna says it patented the technology behind mRNA vaccines in filings between 2010 and 2016, and it's suing to protect all the time and money it put into this.
Most vaccines work by putting a "weakened or inactive germ" into your body so your immune system can teach itself how to kill that virus, as the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) points out.
However, COVID-19 vaccines work a little differently. They use mRNA as a sort of genetic "messenger" that tells your body how to temporarily make spike proteins — something like the spikes that the coronavirus uses to infect you.
Your body notices these spike proteins and then teaches itself how to kill them, thereby giving you a fighting chance if you come in contact with the real thing, the CDC says. Meanwhile, your body breaks down the vaccine mRNA and it leaves your system as "waste."
Moderna says it promised not to enforce its patents in late 2020 when the race was on to come up with and distribute a vaccine ASAP. However, it warned Pfizer that it will start paying more attention to this in March of 2022 when the pandemic "entered a new phase and vaccine supply was no longer a barrier to access in many parts of the world."
Moderna did not put a price tag on its lawsuit, and it said it's not looking for money from vaccine sales in 92 low- and middle-income countries around the world.
A Pfizer spokesperson declined to comment to the New York Times.
Health Canada has a robust website with all the latest information on COVID-19 vaccines and can answer any questions you may have.
This article's cover image was used for illustrative purposes only.
