German biotech firm CureVac has taken Moderna to court in Delaware, claiming the American drugmaker’s blockbuster Spikevax COVID-19 vaccine infringes patents on the messenger RNA technology that makes the shot work. The lawsuit, disclosed in CureVac’s Form 20-F for fiscal year 2024, filed with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission on March 20, 2025, opens a new front in a sprawling legal war over who owns the science behind mRNA vaccines and who gets paid for it.
The case lands at a moment when the commercial stakes around mRNA technology have never been higher. Spikevax generated billions in revenue during the pandemic, and both Moderna and its rivals are racing to apply the same platform to flu, cancer, and rare diseases. A ruling in CureVac’s favor could reshape licensing terms across the industry and ultimately affect how quickly and affordably the next wave of mRNA medicines reaches patients.
What CureVac is alleging
At the heart of the complaint is a dispute over three overlapping layers of mRNA vaccine technology: how the genetic instructions inside the shot are designed, how the nucleotides that make up those instructions are chemically modified to avoid triggering the body’s defenses, and how the fragile mRNA strand is wrapped in a lipid nanoparticle shell so it can slip into human cells and do its work.
CureVac argues that its researchers pioneered key advances in stabilizing mRNA molecules, work that it says predates Moderna’s vaccine development. The company’s SEC filing describes patent disputes and intellectual property risks as material concerns and identifies the specific categories of technology at issue, though it does not reproduce the claim-by-claim allegations contained in the full court complaint.
This is not CureVac’s first patent fight with a major vaccine maker. The Tubingen-based company previously sued BioNTech, Pfizer’s manufacturing partner, over similar mRNA technology claims, though CureVac later dropped key parts of that case and the dispute reached a partial resolution. Reporting in Nature Biotechnology documented that earlier dispute and the types of patents CureVac asserted, including patents covering modified nucleotide chemistry and delivery mechanisms. On-the-record statements from the parties in that case confirmed CureVac’s position that its early research laid critical groundwork for making mRNA vaccines viable.
A crowded patent battlefield
CureVac is far from the only company pressing infringement claims in the mRNA space. In July 2022, Alnylam Pharmaceuticals filed separate lawsuits alleging that both the Pfizer-BioNTech and Moderna COVID-19 vaccines infringed its lipid nanoparticle patent, as Reuters reported at the time. Those Alnylam suits have since been resolved through settlements.
The pattern reflects a basic reality of how mRNA vaccines were built. The technology involves multiple distinct inventions stacked on top of one another, and different companies hold rights to different pieces. A 2022 analysis in Nature Biotechnology examined the broader COVID-19 vaccine patent landscape and found that mRNA-related patents typically span sequence design, chemical modifications, and delivery systems. Both CureVac and Moderna operate within those same technical categories, but no independent side-by-side comparison of their specific formulations, tied to the patents in this lawsuit, has been published.
That complexity is precisely what makes these cases so difficult to resolve. Each layer of the technology can be patented separately, and the boundaries between one company’s contribution and another’s are often blurry enough to guarantee years of litigation.
What Moderna has not yet said
As of May 2026, Moderna has not issued a public statement responding to CureVac’s specific allegations in the Delaware case. In previous patent disputes, Moderna has argued that its vaccine technology was developed independently, but whether the company will mount that same defense here, pursue a licensing agreement, or challenge the validity of CureVac’s patents outright remains unknown.
The financial terms of the lawsuit are also unclear. CureVac’s SEC disclosure flags patent disputes as a material risk but does not specify whether the company is seeking royalties, a lump-sum damages award, or an injunction that could restrict Spikevax sales. Patent litigation in the pharmaceutical sector routinely stretches over several years and frequently ends in confidential settlements rather than courtroom verdicts.
Why the outcome matters beyond the courtroom
For the broader biotech industry, the CureVac-Moderna case is more than a billing dispute between two companies. It is a test of how courts will assign ownership over a technology platform that governments, universities, and private firms all helped develop under extraordinary pandemic pressure. The answers will shape licensing costs, influence which companies can afford to bring new mRNA therapies to market, and potentially affect vaccine pricing for health systems around the world.
CureVac’s earlier suit against BioNTech, which ended in partial resolution rather than a full trial verdict, offers a limited roadmap for how these fights tend to unfold, but each case turns on its own patent claims and technical facts. With the full complaint not yet broadly available and Moderna’s defense strategy still under wraps, the most honest assessment is that this battle is just getting started.
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*This article was researched with the help of AI, with human editors creating the final content.
