On February 25, 2021, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit heard oral arguments in UFCW Local 1500 Welfare Fund v. AbbVie Inc. (Case No. 20-2402), a case appealed from the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Illinois by a group of Humira buyers (including consumer groups, drug wholesalers, and unions) accusing AbbVie of using “patent thicket” around Humira® to block biosimilars from entering the market, in violation of antitrust laws.…

The Federal Circuit has affirmed Bayer’s patent infringement victory related to Baxalta’s biologic product, Adynovate.  Bayer Healthcare LLC v. Baxalta Inc., No. 2019-2418, 2021 WL 771700 (Fed. Cir. Mar. 1, 2021).  At the district court, the jury found the claims of Bayer’s U.S. Patent No. 9,364,520 (“the ’520 patent”) enabled and infringed, and awarded a reasonable royalty of 17.78%.  The appeal raised a variety of issues, including infringement, enablement, damages, and willfulness.  The Federal Circuit…

The Standing Committee of the 13th National People’s Congress, China’s top legislature, adopted the Fourth Amendment to the 1984 Chinese Patent Law on October 17, 2020. The Fourth Amendment follows a series of amendments that were last adopted in 2008 and will become effective on June 1, 2021. Among the provisions is Article 76, establishing a new pharmaceutical patent linkage system modeled after the U.S. Hatch-Waxman Act. Article 76 of the Fourth Amendment was implemented…

Updated March 8, 2021 FDA has not approved any biosimilars in 2021 after only approving three in 2020. EMA approves second Novolog® (insulin aspartate), fifth Avastin® (bevacizumab), eighth Neulasta® (pegfilgrastim), and twelfth Humira® (adalimumab) biosimilars, and withdraws approval of an adalimumab biosimilar and a pegfilgrastim biosimilar. Given the increasing number of approved biosimilars in Europe, biosimilar manufacturers are increasingly deciding to not market their products due to commercial reasons. As pharmaceutical drug costs attract increasing…

On February 23, 2021, a Federal Circuit panel of Chief Judge Prost, Judge Newman, and Judge Moore reheard oral argument in GlaxoSmithKline LLC v. Teva Pharms. USA, Inc. As discussed in our previous post, on February 9, 2021, the panel issued an order granting Teva’s petition for rehearing, vacating the prior October 2, 2020 judgment and withdrawing the October 2, 2020 opinion. The panel limited the oral argument to the issue of whether there…

In a precedential opinion in Amgen Inc. et al. v. Sanofi, Aventisub LLC, et al., No. 20-1074 (Fed. Cir. 2021) issued on February 11, 2021, the Federal Circuit affirmed the decision of the United States District Court for the District of Delaware granting JMOL that Amgen’s Repatha® patents (U.S. Patent Nos. 8,829,165 and 8,859,741) were invalid for lack of enablement.  The district court’s grant of JMOL overturned a jury verdict finding Amgen’s claims were not…

A panel of the Federal Circuit agreed on February 9, 2021, to rehear arguments in a case between GlaxoSmithKline LLC (“GSK”) and Teva Pharmaceuticals USA, Inc (“Teva”) regarding Teva’s generic to GSK’s carvedilol product, Coreg®. As discussed below and in our previous post, the three-judge panel previously held in a 2-1 decision in October 2020 that Teva’s carvedilol product induced infringement of a patent covering the treatment of congestive heart failure even during a…