A healthcare professional prepares a dose of COVID-19 vaccine for health and social care workers at the Life Science Centre at the International Centre for Life in Newcastle upon Tyne, northeast England, on Jan 9, 2021. (OWEN HUMPHREYS / POOL / AFP)

WASHINGTON / PRAGUE – Alnylam Pharmaceuticals Inc escalated its patent fight with Pfizer Inc and Moderna Inc over their COVID-19 vaccines on Tuesday, accusing the companies in Delaware federal court of infringing a newly obtained patent.

The lawsuits said the vaccines' messenger-RNA delivery systems violate an Alnylam patent on lipid nanoparticle technology for delivering genetic material into human cells. The US Patent and Trademark Office issued the patent the same day Alnylam filed the complaints.

Cambridge, Massachusetts-based Alnylam first sued Pfizer and Moderna in March for allegedly infringing an LNP patent

Pfizer, its German vaccine partner and co-defendant BioNTech SE, and Moderna did not immediately respond to requests for comment. Alnylam and its attorneys also did not respond to requests for comment.

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Several biotech companies have filed patent lawsuits this year over the LNP technology in Pfizer and Moderna's COVID-19 vaccines.

Cambridge, Massachusetts-based Alnylam first sued Pfizer and Moderna in March for allegedly infringing an LNP patent. Alnylam has said in all of the lawsuits that its technology is "essential" to the vaccines.

Pfizer denied those allegations in May and responded that Alnylam knows the vaccine is "outside the scope of what Alnylam actually invented." Moderna told the court it was immune from Alnylam's claims because it provided the shots for the US government's national vaccination program.

ALSO READ: Hit by COVID-19, EU population shrinks for second year running

Alnylam's Tuesday lawsuits accused New York-based Pfizer and Cambridge, Massachusetts-based Moderna of infringing a patent covering a specific class of LNPs and a method for manufacturing them.

The new lawsuits, like Alnylam's other lawsuits, ask for an unspecified share from vaccine sales. Pfizer has said that it expects $32 billion in revenue from its vaccine this year, while Moderna forecast $21 billion from its shots.

A woman wearing a face mask walks to get tested for COVID-19 at a sampling station in Prague, Czech Republic, Sept 18, 2020. (PETR DAVID JOSEK / AP)

Czech Republic

The number of daily COVID-19 cases in the Czech Republic exceeded 2,000 for the first time since late April, data from the country's Health Ministry showed Tuesday.

The country recorded 2,031 new cases on Monday, a one-third increase week-on-week. The daily number of COVID-19 hospitalizations also continued to rise, reaching 305 on Monday compared to 286 a week ago.

The number of daily infections in the country started to rise at the end of June. More than 1,000 daily cases were recorded for five consecutive working days in the last week of June.

A healthcare worker administers a dose of the Moderna Covid-19 vaccine at a walk up vaccination site in San Francisco, California, US, on Wednesday, February 3, 2021. (DAVID PAUL MORRIS / BLOOMBERG)

US

The White House on Tuesday urged Americans over age 50 to get vaccination boosters against COVID-19 as the fast-spreading Omicron BA.5 subvariant takes hold across the United States and said doing so now would not preclude another shot this fall.

US health officials warned that the variant, which makes up a majority of cases in the country, was more resistant than previous variants to immunity, including from prior COVID-19 infection.

BA.5 is estimated to account for 65 percent of the coronavirus variants circulating in the United States as of last week, said Rochelle Walensky, the director of the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

Officials urged people who are 50 years old or older to get a booster shot and said that would not prevent them from getting another "bivalent" booster designed to fend off Omicron more specifically later this year.