Up to now, the Pfizer Inc.-Biontech SE COVID-19 vaccine has had a lock on the U.S. pediatric market, for ages 5 to 17, but that could change as early as next week.

More than two years into the COVID-19 pandemic and nearly 18 months since a vaccine was first available for adults, the U.S. is on the cusp of having vaccines available to the youngest Americans.

Pharma companies agree that data is king, since after all, their drugs get approved based on the quality of their data.

The commercial success of COVID-19 mRNA vaccines has other companies in the space “looking in the attic, so to speak,” to see if they have any patents they can assert against components of the vaccines so they can get a percentage of the sales, Aziz Burgy, a patent attorney, told BioWorld. Given the global spread of the pandemic and how quickly it came on, the vaccines have generated billions of dollars in sales in a short period of time, and other companies want a share, he said. He compared today’s patent infringement cases against the vaccine producers to the litigation seen in the early days of the smartphone revolution when other high-tech companies scrambled for a piece of Apple’s and Samsung’s profits.