German vaccine maker CureVac (NASDAQ: CVAC) has filed a lawsuit in Germany against German biotech company BioNTech (NASDAQ: BNTX), seeking compensation for what it says was infringement of its intellectual property rights. CureVac has claimed intellectual property rights to more than twenty years of work on mRNA technology that has helped contribute to the development of COVID-19 vaccines.

At the same time, СureVac does not intend to seek an injunction and does not intend to take legal action that would prevent the production, sale or distribution of the coronavirus vaccine manufactured by BioNTech and Pfizer (NYSE: PFE).

“The COVID-19 pandemic has not yet left Europe, so it is not surprising that large pharmaceutical companies are eager to extract the maximum possible profit from their vaccines. And some companies are trying to capitalize on public scandals and litigation related to intellectual property rights. This is not the first public scandal related to CureVac’s claims that it has begun work on the technology that formed the basis of the COVID-19 vaccine from Pfizer and BioNTech, although the latter did not agree with this , ”comments a leading analyst at Freedom Finance » Natalya Milchakova.

CureVac is focused on developing vaccines against infectious diseases and drugs for cancer and rare diseases. In January 2021, CureVac announced a collaboration on the clinical development of a COVID-19 vaccine with multinational pharmaceutical company Bayer. However, Bayer abandoned the production of the vaccine in October last year, after CureVac withdrew its earlier application to the European Medicines Agency for a first-generation vaccine. CureVac planned to focus on developing a second-generation COVID-19 vaccine with British pharmaceutical company GSK (GlaxoSmithKline).

CureVac is down 0.63% in US premarket trading today, while BioNTech is down 5.4%.