Jury finds biotech firm's patents valid
Wednesday, October 24, 2007 7:56 AM PDT
By Los Angeles Times
Printable version
E-mail this articleIn a decisive victory, biotech giant Amgen Inc. won a jury verdict Tuesday involving a patent case that could have allowed a competitor to muscle in on its lucrative anemia drug franchise.
The Thousand Oaks, Calif.-based biotech's shares surged 2.8 percent in trading on the news.
Swiss drugmaker Roche Holding had planned to introduce an anemia drug under the brand name Mircera as early as late this year. In an uncommon legal strategy, Roche sought to show that Amgen patents were invalid.
During the trial, Amgen adamantly defended its patents, which are not expected to begin expiring until at least 2011, saying they are based on innovations made by one of its scientists.
After a six-week trial in U.S. District Court in Boston, the jury found Roche's drug would infringe on three of Amgen's patent claims.
"This is very good news for Amgen, obviously," said Dale Hunt, an intellectual property law specialist and partner at Sonnenschein Nath & Rosenthal. "Even if Amgen's patents are only valid for a few more years ... every day of lost business means millions of dollars."
In a statement, Amgen said it was pleased with the jury's verdict.
Roche said in a statement that it was disappointed and was evaluating its legal options. "Amgen has had an extended monopoly for the last 20 years in the U.S. blocking new therapeutic options to treat anemia from being introduced," said William Burns, the chief executive of Roche's pharmaceutical division.
Recent studies have raised concerns that the anemia drugs might be harmful in some patients and at higher dosages. As a result, federal regulators and some private insurers have scaled back on what doses of the drugs for which they will reimburse.
Amgen said lower government and insurance reimbursements is partially why the company announced layoffs of up to 2,600 employees, or 14 percent of its staff, this summer.
Amgen's anemia drugs, Aranesp and Epogen, accounted for $7 billion in sales last year, nearly half its revenue. The drugs treat anemia by boosting red blood cell production and raising hemoglobin levels. A similar product, Procrit, is manufactured by Amgen but sold by Johnson & Johnson.
Having another competitor on the market in the midst of so much turmoil for Amgen could have turned an already difficult year into a dire one, analysts said. Some predicted Mircera could have immediately shaved hundreds of millions of dollars a year from the company's sales.
Still, many analysts expected an Amgen victory, especially after a pretrial ruling fell in the company's favor. That partially might explain why the company's victory in a trial from that had so much riding on it led to only a moderate bump in its stock.
"Jury trials are always a bit of a coin toss, so there is always some risk," said Robert W. Baird & Co. biotech analyst Christopher Raymond. "I don't think this is a big shock." Raymond released a note after the news Tuesday saying he is keeping a neutral rating on the stock and remains concerned the company's anemia drugs continue to face pressure.
This month Aetna Inc., one of the nation's largest insurers, quietly changed its reimbursement guidelines for the company's anemia drugs, echoing Medicare's new tighter reimbursement policy for the medicines. Aetna is the largest private insurer to do so, and analysts expect others to follow.
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