As we previously reported, last year Amgen appealed a Delaware district court’s decision dismissing Amgen’s patent infringement complaint under the BPCIA against Coherus on the ground that Coherus’s biosimilar of NEULASTA (pegfilgrastim) could not be found to infringe Amgen’s patent under the doctrine of equivalents (Amgen’s only asserted basis for…
On June 8, 2019, Fresenius Kabi filed a petition for inter partes review challenging the validity of U.S. Patent No. 9,643,997, entitled “Capture purification processes for proteins expressed in a non-mammalian system.” The challenged claims in the patent, owned by Amgen Inc., relate to processes for purifying recombinant proteins expressed in a…
On May 2, 2019 Coherus BioSciences, Inc. (“Coherus”) announced that it has settled the trade secret action brought by Amgen Inc. (“Amgen”) relating to Amgen’s Neulasta® and Coherus’ Udenyca® products. In March 2017, Amgen filed a complaint alleging a “massive conspiracy” by disloyal former Amgen employees in a “concerted effort…
This morning, the Federal Circuit issued a precedential opinion affirming the district court’s judgment of non-infringement in favor of Sandoz in its BPCIA litigation against Amgen concerning Sandoz’s Zarxio® (filgrastim-sndz) biosimilar product and proposed pegfilgrastim biosimilar. As we previously reported, in December 2017 the Northern California district court granted summary…
U.S. Patent No. 9,856,287, which is directed to a protein refolding method, is one of the patents-in-suit in the pending Amgen v. Adello (filgrastim) BPCIA litigation and the sole patent-in-suit in the pending Amgen v. Apotex (filgrastim and pegfilgrastim) BPCIA litigation. As we previously reported, in November 2018, Adello and…
Last week, Sandoz announced the resubmission of its Biologics License Application (“BLA”) for its proposed biosimilar to Neulasta® (pegfilgrastim). The resubmission is to address an FDA complete response letter that Sandoz received in June 2016. According to the press release, the resubmission includes new data from a pivotal pharmacokinetics/pharmacodynamics study. The study compared: …
Last week, the district court in Amgen v. Apotex (No. 18-61828) (S.D. Fla.) denied Apotex’s motion to dismiss Amgen’s complaint in a follow-on suit concerning Apotex’s pegfilgrastim and filgrastim biosimilar candidates. By way of background, Amgen and Apotex have been involved in multiple patent lawsuits regarding Apotex’s pegfilgrastim and filgrastim biosimilars…
On February 21, 2019, Sandoz initiated a lawsuit against Amgen in the Northern District of California seeking a declaration that its biosimilar filgrastim and pegfilgrastim products do not infringe the Amgen’s ’997 patent. The ’997 patent relates to a method of protein purification and is in the same patent family…
Here are some recent developments in U.S. legal proceedings relating to biosimilars: On December 10, 2018, in the Southern District of Florida, Apotex filed a motion to dismiss the patent infringement complaint that Amgen filed this past August alleging patent infringement based on Apotex’s filing of aBLAs for pegfilgrastim and filgrastim biosimilar…
Here are our picks of some legal developments to keep an eye out for in the new year: Etanercept biosimilar trial decision – This past September, in the Immunex v. Sandoz BPCIA patent litigation concerning Sandoz’s Erelzi™ (etanercept-szzs), an FDA-approved but yet-unmarketed biosimilar of Enbrel®, the New Jersey district court…