The patent land­scape around the two top Covid-19 vac­cines is get­ting more com­plex and con­test­ed by the day.

Most re­cent­ly, Cana­di­an biotech Acuitas sued Ar­bu­tus and Genevant, two com­pa­nies that Acuitas be­lieves are mak­ing base­less claims about be­ing near the heart of Pfiz­er and BioN­Tech’s and Mod­er­na’s wild­ly suc­cess­ful Covid-19 vac­cines.

The suit comes as Acuitas’ LNP, or lipid nanopar­ti­cle, tech­nol­o­gy is used to de­liv­er Comir­naty via an es­tab­lished part­ner­ship. But the com­pa­ny says that “the de­fen­dants here, Ar­bu­tus and Genevant, had noth­ing to do with that suc­cess,” ac­cord­ing to a fil­ing Fri­day be­fore the US Dis­trict Court for the South­ern Dis­trict of New York.

Suf­fice to say Acuitas is not hap­py with Ar­bu­tus and Genevant’s claims.

“Ar­bu­tus and Genevant seek the ben­e­fits flow­ing from Comir­naty with­out hav­ing borne any of the bur­den of de­vel­op­ing it. Their claim to rights in— and pay­ment for— Comir­naty is base­less,” Acuitas added in their fil­ing.

The re­tort is sim­i­lar to one made by Mod­er­na last week as RNAi gi­ant Al­ny­lam Phar­ma­ceu­ti­cals has al­so sued the Boston biotech and Pfiz­er over sim­i­lar LNP in­tel­lec­tu­al prop­er­ty — seek­ing a “fair roy­al­ty” as com­pen­sa­tion. Ar­bu­tus and Genevant al­so sued Mod­er­na late last month in Delaware dis­trict court for patent in­fringe­ment over patents re­lat­ed to the com­pa­nies’ nu­cle­ic acid-lipid par­ti­cles and lipid vesi­cles. Ar­bu­tus and Genevant al­so ex­pressed their de­sire for a “rea­son­able war­ran­ty” from Mod­er­na’s Spike­vax sales.

For its part, a Mod­er­na spokesper­son has pre­vi­ous­ly told End­points News “we are con­fi­dent that Mod­er­na’s COVID-19 vac­cine is not cov­ered by those claims. Mod­er­na is a pi­o­neer of mR­NA-based vac­cines, and we have de­vel­oped our own pro­pri­etary LNP-de­liv­ery tech­nol­o­gy.”

In Acuitas’ 42-page com­plaint, the biotech is ask­ing the court to rule that Comir­naty does not in­fringe on any valid claims of any of Ar­bu­tus’s patents and that the court in­val­i­date the com­pa­ny’s re­lat­ed patents.

Genevant is a par­tial sub­sidiary of Roivant Sci­ences, which owns 84% of Genevant and Ar­bu­tus owns the rest. Roivant, Vivek Ra­maswamy’s for­mer firm, has al­so made in­vest­ments in­to Ar­bu­tus, in­clud­ing a $117 mil­lion in­vest­ment back in 2017.

Acuitas said in its fil­ing that Genevant and Ar­bu­tus had sent let­ters to Pfiz­er head­quar­ters back in 2020 and 2021, threat­en­ing to sue the big phar­ma and as­sert their patents.

Sanofi expects its RSV antibody jointly developed with AstraZeneca will be available next season, executive VP of vaccines Thomas Triomphe announced on the company’s quarterly call.

Beyfortus, also known as nirsevimab, was approved in the EU back in November and is currently under FDA review with an expected decision coming in the third quarter of this year. The news comes as the FDA plans to hold advisory committee meetings over the next couple months to review RSV vaccines from Pfizer and GSK.

After a whopping $4 billion asset buy from Nimbus Therapeutics, along with a $400 million deal with Hutchmed for a colorectal cancer drug, Takeda executives touted pipeline optimism on its latest earnings call this week.

That’s because the TYK2 inhibitor for psoriasis Takeda is getting from Nimbus, along with the Hutchmed fruquintinib commercialization outside of China, are just two of what it reports are 10 late-stage development programs of promising candidates.

Regeneron faced a substantial slump in overall revenue last year, but the focus still remains on some of its biggest blockbusters.

The pharma with several high-profile partnerships — Sanofi and Bayer among them — said Friday that Q4 revenue was down 31% for the quarter, and down 24% for the entire year. However, that won’t stop blockbuster expansion plans.

One of those is Eylea, the Bayer-partnered eye disease drug that has been in major competition with Roche’s Vabysmo. While Eylea is currently only approved in a 2 mg dose, the company recently filed for approval to give a 8 mg dose, in hopes of making a longer-lasting treatment.