(Reuters) -The European Patent Office declared a patent owned by CureVac valid, after a challenge from drugmaker BioNTech, the company said on Thursday.
U.S.-listed shares of Germany-based CureVac rose 11.8% in extended trading.
Following the ruling, the Regional Court of Düsseldorf will decide whether the patent in its amended form has been infringed. An infringement hearing is scheduled for July 1.
The ruling represents a major milestone in the ongoing patent dispute between CureVac and BioNTech in Germany, which involves a total of six intellectual property rights related to messenger RNA (mRNA) technology.
CureVac’s efforts to develop an mRNA-based COVID-19 vaccine did not come to fruition during the pandemic, whereas BioNTech and its partner Pfizer chalked up more than $40 billion in combined vaccines sales in 2021 and 2022.
In 2023, a German court invalidated a separate CureVac patent after a challenge by BioNTech. Last year, Pfizer and BioNTech won a bid to invalidate CureVac’s UK COVID vaccine patents.
(Reporting by Puyaan Singh in Bengaluru; Editing by Alan Barona)
