Lawfully selling prescription opioid drugs is not a public nuisance, the Oklahoma Supreme Court said in overturning a $465 million judgment against Johnson & Johnson (J&J).
A U.S. district court jury in Boston found Nov. 5 that Gregory Lemelson and Massachusetts-based Lemelson Capital Management LLC made fraudulent misrepresentations about Ligand Pharmaceuticals Inc. to drive down the San Diego company’s stock price.
Biopharma scored a victory of sorts in the ongoing 340B war that’s pitting drug companies against the combined forces of hospital groups, contract pharmacies and the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services.
In the latest skirmish over who can get the 340B discounts on prescription drugs that are supposed to help qualifying U.S. providers offer charity care, the Pharmaceutical Research and Manufacturers of America (PhRMA) is challenging a recently passed Arkansas law that seeks to regulate drug manufacturers’ participation in the federal drug pricing program.
Biopharma companies that have agreed to pay the U.S. Department of Justice millions of dollars to resolve allegations that they illegally used charities to cover patients’ Medicare copays for brand drugs are finding those settlements may be just the beginning of their legal woes, even when the companies admit no liability in the settlement.
In a precedential opinion, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit affirmed a lower court’s conclusion that Belcher Pharmaceuticals LLC’s chief science officer engaged in inequitable conduct by withholding material information from the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office during prosecution of Belcher’s 9,283,197 patent.
Now that the U.S. judge overseeing Purdue Pharma LP’s bankruptcy proceedings has conditionally signed off on a $10 billion settlement intended to resolve 3,000 opioid lawsuits filed by states, tribes and local governments, the privately owned drugmaker can take the first steps to transform itself into a public service company owned mostly by the National Opioid Abatement Trust and governed by a new independent board.
Kite Pharma Inc. is no longer on the hook for $1.2 billion in damages and royalties a jury awarded to Juno Therapeutics Inc. and the Sloan Kettering Institute for Cancer Research in a patent infringement suit involving Kite’s CAR T therapy Yescarta (axicabtagene ciloleucel).
In a passionately worded 141-page decision, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the First Circuit said the lower court was wrong in overturning part of a jury verdict convicting former Insys Therapeutics Inc. executives of a scheme to bribe doctors to prescribe Subsys (fentanyl), which was approved only to treat breakthrough cancer pain.
