Pfizer Hit With New Covid Vaccine Patent Suit From Arbutus (1)

Pfizer Inc. and its partner BioNTech SE were hit with a patent infringement lawsuits on Tuesday from Arbutus Biophamara Corp. over proprietary technology used to deliver the mRNA-based Covid-19 vaccine to human cells.

Arbutus, joined by Swiss licensee Genevant Sciences GmbH in filing the suit, claimed that the Pfizer-BioNTech Covid-19 vaccine infringed five different patents for lipid nanoparticle technologies, or LNP.

The lawsuit is the latest in a series of recent legal bouts between drug companies over the delivery-mechanism technology for the Covid-19 vaccine.

The LNP technology helped overcome a decades-long scientific problem over how to effectively deliver a vaccine’s ...