Yesterday, the PTAB issued final written decisions in two IPR proceedings (IPR2017-01884 and IPR2017-01879) it instituted on February 15, 2018 against U.S. Patent No. 8,679,487 (the ’487 patent), held by Immunex. The ’487 patent is directed to isolated human antibodies that compete with a reference antibody for binding to human interleukin-4 (IL-4) receptor. …
On February 5, 2019, Mundipharma announced the European launch of Pelmeg® (pegfilgrastim), a biosimilar of Neulasta®. As we have previously reported, Mundipharma acquired Pelmeg® from Cinfa Biotech and it was approved by the European Commission in November 2018. According to the press release, Pelmeg® is now available in Germany, the…
On Monday, Magistrate Judge Lloret, who is visiting the U.S. District Court for the District of Delaware from the Eastern District of Pennsylvania, granted Boehringer Ingelheims’s (“BI’s”) motion to compel discovery relating to its unclean hands defense in the ongoing AbbVie v. Boehringer Ingelheim litigation concerning BI’s aBLA for a biosimilar version of AbbVie’s…
On January 18, 2019, in Amgen v. Sanofi, the ongoing litigation concerning Sanofi and Regeneron’s Praluent® (alirocumab) product, Judge Andrews of the District of Delaware denied Sanofi’s motion for summary judgment that the asserted genus claims directed to monoclonal antibodies that inhibit PCSK9 (such as Amgen’s Repatha® and Sanofi/Regeneron’s Praluent® products)…
There will soon be a new director of Therapeutic Biologics & Biosimilars Staff (TBBS) in the Office of New Drugs (OND) at the FDA. Dr. Sarah Yim will become the new acting director of TBBS beginning in March. Dr. Yim joined the FDA in 2005 and is currently the director…
On Monday, a Delaware federal jury awarded $155 million to Bayer for infringement of U.S. Patent No. 9,364,520, which covers several of Bayer’s hemophilia medications, including Kogenate, Kogenate FS, and Kovaltry. The ‘520 patent claims full-length Factor VIII that is pegylated at its B-domain site and compositions thereof. The verdict was entered…
This morning, the Federal Circuit issued a precedential opinion dismissing Momenta’s appeal from the PTAB’s final written decision upholding the patentability of Bristol-Myers Squibb’s abatacept patents against Momenta’s IPR challenge. The Court dismissed Momenta’s appeal “for absence of standing/jurisdiction and for mootness.” As we have previously reported, although the Federal…
On January 30, 2019, Allergan and its partner Medytox filed a complaint with the ITC to block imports of Evolus’s follow-on biologic to Allergan’s Botox® (onabotulinumtoxinA injection) product, DWP-450, manufactured by Daewoong Pharmaceuticals. The complaint alleges that Daewoong misappropriated trade secrets of Medytox. Evolus filed a BLA for DWP-450 and it was accepted…
The European Commission has released a report summarizing the European Commission and the national competition authorities’ work to enforce European Union antitrust and merger rules in the pharmaceutical space. The report notes that, by monitoring the pharmaceutical market to ensure that price competition for pharmaceuticals is not artificially reduced or eliminated, and…
On January 22, 2019, the Supreme Court issued its decision in Helsinn Healthcare v. Teva Pharmaceuticals USA, holding that under § 102(a), as amended by the American Invents Act (“AIA”), an inventor’s sale of an invention to a third party who is obligated to keep the invention confidential could still…