Acuitas’ Inventorship Suit Clouds Alnylam Case on Pfizer Vaccine

Acuitas Therapeutics Inc. sued Alnylam Pharmaceuticals Inc. in federal court seeking to add inventors to patents for technology used in Pfizer Inc.’s Covid-19 vaccine, threatening Alnylam’s pending infringement case over Pfizer and BioNTech SE’s Comirnaty.

Vancouver-based Acuitas and three of its longest-tenured employees—co-founder Michael J. Hope, Steven Ansell, and Xinyao Du—allege that Alynylam wrongfully omitted them as co-inventors on six patents related to vaccine-delivery technology, according to a complaint filed July 12 and docketed Monday in the US District Court for the District of Delaware.

The dispute is over patents related to lipid nanoparticles, or LNPs, the tiny bubbles of ...