The U.S. FTC is taking a bow after Teva Pharmaceutical Industries Ltd. asked the FDA to remove more than 200 patent listings from the agency’s Orange Book.
Sandoz Inc. came out the big winner Nov. 18 when the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit wiped out $39 million in infringement damages a jury had awarded to Allergan plc. Sandoz overcame “the doubly high burden of persuading us to overturn a jury verdict of no invalidity,” the appellate court said in its precedential opinion.
A jury has returned a verdict of infringement against Apple Inc., as part of a series of patent disputes with Masimo Corp., producing a damages award of $634 million which is seen in some quarters as an indicator that Masimo has the momentum against Apple.
The U.S. FDA once again has a leadership gap at the top of its drug center, which already has been ravaged this year by massive terminations, resignations and retirements of senior leaders. George Tidmarsh, a biopharma industry veteran who’s helmed CDER for a little more than three months, resigned effective immediately Nov. 2 after being placed on administrative leave two days earlier amid a Department of Health and Human Services probe.
Patent litigation doesn’t always create outlandish damages awards but when it does, the outlandishness typically trends toward inordinately large sums. This was decidedly not the case in the Federal Circuit hearing in a patent lawsuit pitting Intuitive Surgical Inc., of Sunnyvale, Calif., against Rex Medical LP, of Conshohocken, Pa., given the damages awarded to Rex amounted to a mere $1.
A yearslong bipartisan effort to end the patent-eligibility chaos the U.S. Supreme Court created more than a decade ago could finally come to fruition with the current Congress.
Johnson & Johnson Medtech won out over a jury verdict that found the company’s Depuy Synthes liable for $20 million for infringing a patent claimed by Rasmussen Instruments LLC.
Like the federal district court before it, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit said it lacks jurisdiction to rule on the merits of Novo Nordisk A/S’ claim that the CMS violated the Inflation Reduction Act (IRA) when it treated six of the company’s insulin aspart products as one negotiation-eligible single-source drug.
While the final word has yet to be written, Stryker Corp. came out the biggest winner in a dispute involving four related patents owned by Osteomed LLC, part of Colson Associates’ Acumed.
The debate around the U.S. 340B prescription drug discount program is once again heating up in court and in Congress. A day after the American Hospital Association called on the FTC and Department of Justice to investigate alleged antitrust issues with the rebate models a few drug companies have proposed, some members of Congress raised concerns Sept. 9 about how providers are abusing the program. Meanwhile, a U.S. appellate court heard arguments that same day on whether states can speak in the silence of the federal law that created the program more than 30 years ago.