BREAKING NEWS: PTAB Denies IPR Institution on AbbVie’s Humira

The PTAB denied institution on two of Amgen’s IPR petitions (IPR2015-01517, IPR2015-01514) against AbbVie’s Humira.  The patents, 8,916,157 and 8,916,158, are directed to formulations of Humira, that Amgen argued were obvious because they combined adalimumab, a known antibody, with known excipients for antibody formulations.  Based on the PTAB’s claim construction and analysis, however, the PTAB held: “Amgen has not persuaded us that ‘[t]he skilled person would have had a reasonable expectation of success in applying the formulations commercially available and taught in the literature [to adalimumab].”