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curavac (NASDAQ: CVAC) plummeted 30% after Germany's patent court invalidated a patent that was the basis of a lawsuit the vaccine developer filed against rival BioNTech SE (BNTX). BionTech ADRs rose 1.3% and Pfizer (PFE) advanced 4%.
The patent is related to messenger RNA technology. He This decision means that the patent is not valid in Germany, the Federal Patent Court ruled on Tuesday.
CureVac (CVAC) plans to appeal the decision, the company said in a statement Tuesday.
“While we do not seek to diminish the value of mRNA vaccines in changing the course of the COVID-19 pandemic, we strongly believe that CureVac's role in laying the scientific foundation for those vaccines needs to be recognized,” CureVac said in the statement. . “We will continue to defend our claim for recognition and fair compensation and will take appropriate action by appealing this decision.”
The German patent court ruling comes after a German court in September stayed proceedings in a patent lawsuit that the German vaccine developer had filed against local rival BioNTech (BNTX) over the use of mRNA technology in COVID vaccines.
The patent infringement case filed in June 2022 is related to five intellectual property rights that CureVac (CVAC) claims were violated by BioNTech (BNTX), which, together with Pfizer (PFE), developed the first COVID vaccine based in mRNA in the world.
While CureVac's (CVAC) first-generation COVID-19 vaccine based on similar technology failed to reach the market, Pfizer (PFE) and BioNTech (BNTX) made billions of dollars in sales from their vaccine, Comirnaty.
