Patent Baristas

Boston Scientific Corp. announced that a jury in Delaware found that one of the company’s cardiovascular stents infringed on a patent held by Johnson & Johnson. Monetary damages will be determined in a later hearing and there are likely to be post-verdict motions and hearings, as well as an appeal. During an earlier trial of […]

A Canadian court ruled in favor of Sanofi-Aventis, maker of the top-selling blood thinner Plavix, preventing Apotex from selling a generic version of Plavix in Canada. Plavix is one of the three top-selling drugs in the world with sales of $5.4 billion. Sanofi has a similar suit against Aptoex and Dr. Reddy in the U.S. […]

In a March 8 opinion, a three-judge panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 11th Circuit in Atlanta rejected a 2003 Federal Trade Commission (FTC) ruling that Schering-Plough Corporation’s patent settlements with two other companies amounted to pay-offs not to compete. The FTC claimed that the company illegally kept cheaper versions of blood […]

Walker Morris in London sent a note regarding the October, 2004, opinion in the patents case Kirin-Amgen v. Hoechst Marion Roussel. The case was the first opportunity for the House to consider the critical question of the extent of protection conferred by a patent under the provisions of the European Patent Convention (EPC), which were […]

The Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF), along with consumer advocacy groups Public Knowledge, and the Consumer Project, filed an amicus brief in the Merck v. Integra case asking the Supreme Court to protect scientific researchers from patent infringement. Merck v. Integra, as we posted earlier here, deals specifically with information researchers submitted to the Food and […]

Even while their battle over Lipitor continues, Pfizer has sued Ranbaxy Laboratories in District Court for patent infringement of its patent on Accupril (the generic name is quinapril), an anti-hypertensive with annual sales of $550 million. Pfizer is suing on U.S. Patent No. 4,743,450, which covers the use of lactose and microcrystalline cellulose for the […]

Medtronic, Inc. announced that a Delaware jury rendered verdicts in patent litigation between Medtronic and the ACS subsidiary of Guidant Corporation. The jury found the Guidant Lau patents valid and infringed by some of Medtronic stents, including the S7 and Driver stents. However, there will be another hearing regarding Medtronic’s claim that Guidant’s patent is […]

A U.S. District Court ordered Nobel Prize winner and former Yale University professor John Fenn, 87, to pay Yale $545,000 in royalties and penalties, and pay their legal bills of almost $500,000. While at Yale in the late 1980s, Fenn developed a method for mass spectrometric analysis of chemical compounds in solution concerned with determining […]