European Patent Office Invalidates Moderna’s RNA Solution

The European Patent Office penalizes Moderna. The European body, in charge of the administrative application of the international convention on the European patent, has announced that it declares the patent on the RNA solution owned by the American pharmaceutical company invalid, according to Reuters. 

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The decision gives victory to both BioNTech and its partner Pfizer, in a patent dispute between the two coronavirus vaccine manufacturers.

The German biotechnology company has described the decision as “important since we believe that this and other Moderna patents do not meet the requirements for their grant and should never have been granted.” For its part, the American company has announced that it will file an appeal, ensuring that it had already patented the RNA technology before the pandemic exploded.

The COVID-19 pharmaceutical companies (Pfizer, Johnson & Johnson, AstraZeneca, and Moderna) announced a joint profit of $60.97 billion in 2022, compared to $55.17 billion in 2021. Pfizer was the biggest driver of this growth, closing last year with a profit of $31.37 billion, compared to the $21.98 billion achieved in 2021. However, Moderna has already registered a 31% drop in its profit in 2022.

Moderna has announced that it will file an appeal, stating that it had already patented the RNA technology before the pandemic

However, profits have plummeted over the past year. A month ago, BioNTech announced that it was making a provision of €900 million as a result of the deterioration of its inventory because the demand for the vaccine made in alliance with Pfizer was lower than initially expected. The German biotechnology company’s announcement came after Pfizer’s statement, confirming the reduction of its forecasts for the COVID-19 vaccine (Comirnaty) and its antiviral (paxlovid).

In this same direction, Moderna already announced in September that it would cut the production of vaccines against Covid-19. The American biotechnology company announced that it was seeking to adapt to lower demand in order to achieve the expected gross margin growth, an objective that involved taking it from 75% to 80%.

In fact, at the beginning of November, Moderna already confirmed its bad omens, recording losses of $3.6 billion in the third quarter of 2023, compared to the million dollars in revenue it recorded in the same period last year. Despite announcing that it would cut production of its vaccines, the pharmaceutical company predicts that the US market during the fall months will be fifty million doses, backed by sales worth $6 billion.

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(Featured image by Tumisu via Pixabay)

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First published in PlantaDoce. A third-party contributor translated and adapted the article from the original. In case of discrepancy, the original will prevail.

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