A dispute over covid-vaccine technology ends up in court

The companies behind two of America’s most widely used covid-19 vaccines are at loggerheads. Despite promising publicly not to enforce covid-19-related patents until the pandemic was over, Moderna, an American drugmaker, filed claims on August 26th against Pfizer, another American firm, and BioNTech, its German partner, in American and German courts. The dispute is over elements of the messenger rna (mrna) technology used by the firms to…