By Blake Brittain
- British drug company GlaxoSmithKline along with competitor Pfizer have decided to settle a legal dispute. The lawsuit claimed that Pfizer’s RSV vaccine, named Abrysvo, infringed upon GSK's patent for their own RSV vaccine called Arexvy. This agreement was documented in a recent submission to a federal court in Delaware on Thursday.
GSK and Pfizer stated in their filing that they would withdraw the case with prejudice, indicating that it cannot be brought up again. Representatives from both corporations did not promptly reply to inquiries seeking further details or comments, particularly regarding whether the matter had been resolved through settlement.
GSK, Pfizer, and Moderna have created RSV vaccines that have received approval from the U.S. Food and Drug Administration. GSK’s Arexvy accounts for most of the RSV vaccine sales in the United States. This respiratory illness usually presents as common cold symptoms; however, it is also one of the primary reasons for pneumonia among young children and elderly individuals.
In 2023, GSK filed a lawsuit against Pfizer, claiming that the company based in New York violated GSK’s patents concerning antigen technology with their vaccine. According to the legal filing, GSK stated that Pfizer initiated its RSV project approximately in 2013, which was at minimum seven years following GSK’s commencement of development for their own vaccine.
Pfizer refuted the accusations and contended that GSK's patents were not valid. Last year, it successfully persuaded a London court to annul the relevant UK patents held by GSK in an unrelated case.
GSK has similarly filed a lawsuit against Pfizer in the U.S. for infringing on patents related to the technology used in Pfizer’s popular COVID-19 vaccine, Comirnaty. This legal battle is still not settled.
(Reported by Blake Brittain in Washington; Edited by David Bario and Sandra Maler)