Last month, the FDA released four new guidance documents providing insight on the FDA’s interpretation of provisions of the Biologics Price Competition and Innovation Act (“BPCIA”), as it amends the Public Health Service Act (“PHS Act”) and the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (“ACA”), among other statutes. Two of the documents relate to the
The FDA recently proposed an amendment to its regulations defining the term “biological product.” The proposed amendment incorporates changes made by the Biologics Price Competition and Innovation Act (BPCIA) into the FDA’s regulations, and provides the FDA’s interpretation of the statutory terms “protein” and “chemically synthesized polypeptide.” The proposed definitions of the statutory terms are
Prior to 1994, the term of a U.S. patent was 17 years from the date of issuance. When the Uruguay Round Agreements Act (“URAA”) changed the term to 20 years from the earliest nonprovisional priority date, it appeared that unpatentability due to obviousness type double patenting (“ODP”) would no longer be relevant since the patent
We previously wrote about Genentech’s U.S. Patent No. 6,407,213 (“the ’213 patent”) to Carter, first in October 2017, and more recently in March 2018. At the time of our last update, the ’213 patent had been at issue in six district court litigations, and had been the subject of ten filed IPR petitions,
RFEM’s Biosimilars IPR Dashboard provides current information on IPR proceedings related to proposed biosimilar products.
On June 14, 2018, Senator Orrin Hatch of Utah, the co-author of the Hatch-Waxman Act, filed an amendment to the Hatch-Waxman Act in an effort to further incentivize generic drug development. The language of the amendment, known as the Hatch-Waxman Integrity Act of 2018, states that its purpose is “to prevent the inter partes review
On March 8, 2018, Amgen Inc. (“Amgen”) filed suit against Adello Biologics, LLC (“Adello”) in the District of New Jersey, alleging infringement of seventeen patents: U.S. Patent Nos. 6,180,391; 7,083,948; 7,118,884; 7,384,765; 7,427,659; 7,662,930; 7,735,525; 7,781,395; 8,191,566; 8,273,707; 8,940,878; 8,952,138; 9,418,416; 9,632,095; 9,643,997; 9,704,239; and 9,856,287. The case is assigned to Judge Claire C. Cecchi
As we recently covered, May 15, 2018, saw the FDA granting approval to Hospira (now a Pfizer subsidiary) for its Retacrit injection, a biosimilar to Amgen’s Epogen®. The approval, based on a Biologics License Application dated December 16, 2014, came after Hospira resubmitted its application twice after receiving Complete Response Letters from the FDA,
Lately, it has been very difficult to get diagnostic claims allowed without limiting the method steps to very specific components (e.g. reagents, devices, assays, samples, etc.). However, a recent Federal Circuit case suggests that there may be hope for broader diagnostic claims in the future. In Exergen Corp. v. Kaz USA, Inc., Appeal No. 2016-2315,
Sanofi-Aventis U.S. LLC, Genzyme Corporation, and Regeneron Pharmaceuticals, Inc. recently scored a victory in their ongoing dispute over a patent that Immunex Corporation claims covers Dupixent®, Sanofi and Regeneron’s anti-IL-4 antibody marketed for treatment of moderate-to-severe eczema. In February, the Patent Trial and Appeal Board (“the Board”) instituted two petitions for inter partes