Frankfurt: German agrichemical giant Bayer confirmed to AFP on Wednesday that it was suing American pharmaceutical firms Pfizer, Moderna and Johnson and Johnson as well as Germany's BioNTech, alleging they broke a patent to make Covid jabs.
The defendants allegedly used a patented mRNA process developed in the 1980s by US biotech firm Monsanto -- now a Bayer subsidiary -- as part of efforts to make crops more resistant to pests, according to suits filed in Delaware and New Jersey federal courts on Tuesday.
"This lawsuit alleges the defendants infringed on patented innovations owned by Bayer which increase mRNA stability and which Bayer initially used for agricultural purposes," a Bayer spokesman said, alleging that it allowed them to solve "one of the biggest challenges they faced during vaccine development".
Biotech firm BioNTech collaborated with Pfizer to make the blockbuster Comirnaty coronavirus vaccine, the first to receive approval in the West, basing it on novel use of mRNA technology.
Moderna's vaccine is also an mRNA product, while Johnson and Johnson's delivers a genetically modified cold virus that triggers an immune response protective against Covid.
Numerous lawsuits
Pfizer, Moderna, BioNTech and Johnson and Johnson did not immediately respond to requests for comment from AFP.
Unlike traditional vaccines which contain some form of target virus or its components, mRNA vaccines contain genetic materials that instruct human cells to make proteins typical of the targeted virus -- allowing production to be scaled-up more quickly since the virus need not be grown in the lab.
Numerous lawsuits have since been launched over use of the technology.
In August, Pfizer and BioNTech reached a settlement worth $740 million plus royalties with Britain's GSK and Germany's CureVac over an mRNA dispute.
"Over the past several years, many companies and research institutions alleging that their technologies were used in the development of the vaccine have sued," Bayer and Monsanto said in their suits against Pfizer and BionTech as well as Moderna.
Bayer did not specify the amount it is seeking in damages but said in all suits that it wanted "basic compensation afforded to a patent holder under the patent statute".