Penn reaped at least $1.6 billion in royalties from the Pfizer-BioNTech COVID-19 vaccine. Now the university is suing for more.

The University of Pennsylvania is suing German drugmaker BioNTech over royalty payments for the COVID-19 vaccine it made with Pfizer using mRNA technology developed by Penn scientists.

In the federal complaint filed Monday in the Eastern District of Pennsylvania, Penn alleges that BioNTech hasn’t paid the university all of what it is owed.

Penn declined to share more information about the financial agreement with BioNTech, and financial information has been redacted from the publicly available complaint.

Penn contends that BioNTech agreed to pay royalties on worldwide sales of the BioNTech-Pfizer vaccine, but has paid only for sales in countries in which the university has patents for the mRNA technology. The university also says BioNTech paid a lower royalty rate than Penn is entitled to.

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Penn and BioNTech have been in discussions regarding the calculation of royalties for over a year, the German company said in a statement to The Inquirer.

“We disagree with the positions being taken by the University of Pennsylvania, and intend to vigorously defend ourselves against their allegations,” a BioNTech spokesperson said.

The Pfizer-BioNTech COVID-19 vaccine that rolled out in late 2020 utilizes patented technology that was developed by Penn researchers Katalin Karikó and Drew Weissman. They were the first to discover a way to harness the body’s own genetic code to develop new therapeutics and won the Nobel Prize last fall for their work.

Penn licensed the technology to BioNTech and Moderna in August 2020 through a subsidiary, Cellscript LLC, in return for royalties from sales.

The university alleges that BioNTech is breaching the licensing contract in two ways.

First, Penn says it is getting paid royalties only on sales in countries where the university has patent rights for mRNA. The university says it should be paid royalties on all sales worldwide.

Penn also said that BioNTech didn’t calculate the amount of royalties correctly.

The contract allows BioNTech to reduce its payments to Penn if the amount of royalties it pays other companies exceeds a certain amount. (The amount is redacted in the complaint.) Penn argues that BioNTech lowered its royalties rate prematurely.

“Penn is seeking full royalty payments under patent licensing agreements that enabled BioNTech to develop its marketed COVID vaccine,” a Penn spokesperson said.

The publicly available civil complaint is redacted and did not include the financial terms of the agreement, how much has been paid, or the percent of revenue that BioNTech agreed to pay.

But Penn has received $1.6 billion between 2021 and 2023 from BioNTech in royalties related to the COVID-19 vaccine, according to an Inquirer analysis of data from the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services’ Open Payment system, which tracks transactions from pharmaceutical and medical device companies to health-care providers and teaching hospitals.

There are limits on how Penn can use the money it receives from royalties. Under 1980 federal law that allows universities to benefit financially from government-funded basic science research, Penn must put the money back into early scientific research.

In the civil complaint, Penn alleges that the university is “owed significant additional royalties that, once recouped from BioNTech, will fund further scientific research.”

Staff writer Ryan W. Briggs contributed to this article.