Patent Baristas

The US Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit affirmed that the patent on Plavix® will remain in force.  The patent at issue is US Pat. No. 4,847,265, owned by Sanofi-Synthelabo, covers clopidogrel bisulfate, the active ingredient in Plavix®.  Sanofi-Synthelabo v. Apotex (07-1438).
Clopidogrel is the common name of the dextrorotatory isomer of the chemical compound [...]

In another blow against late claiming, the Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit denied an appeal from a re-examination because the patent applicants “could have filed the present claims” earlier in the application.  Although I suspect the court was just ticked off because the applicants appeared to be gaming the system – the reexamination [...]

The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit gave a high-five to settlement agreements between a patent holder and a generic manufacturer saying it doesn’t violate antitrust laws under the Hatch-Waxman Act.  In re Ciprofloxacin Hydrochloride Antitrust Litigation (08-1097).
The agreements in question involved a reverse payment from the Bayer to Barr, but did not [...]

The Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit handed down the long awaited en banc decision on In re Bilski (07-1130) in which the court looked at the question of when does a claim that contains both mental and physical steps create patent-eligible subject matter and whether a method or process must result in a [...]

After the district court held that an earlier patent (Pat. No. 5,236,940) did not qualify as an enabling prior art reference and didn’t anticipate claims of U.S. Pat. No. 5,527,814, relating to the use of riluzole to treat amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS or Lou Gehrig’s disease), the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit [...]

In Janssen Pharma v. Apotex (08-1062), Apotex tried to get the federal circuit to grant a do-over of the dismissal of its declaratory judgment action for noninfringement against Janssen.
Janssen holds an approved NDA for its drug Risperdal® Oral Solution for which the Orange Book listed U.S. Patent Nos. 4,804,663, 5,453,425 and 5,616,587.  The ’663 patent [...]

In Prasco v. Medicis Pharmaceutical (07-1524), Prasco tried to get a declaratory judgment that one of its products did not infringe various patents owned by Medicis Pharmaceutical Corp. and Imaginative Research Associates. The district court dismissed the action for lack of jurisdiction, concluding that Prasco’s complaint failed to establish a case or controversy under Article [...]

here at Patent Baristas, we get all giddy when a case comes down the pike involving protein synthesis and gene cloning vectors.  It doesn’t happen all that often and, when it does, we’re treated to BIO 101 introductions explaining how proteins are biomolecules that “are encoded by particular deoxyribonucleic acid (“DNA”) sequences known as genes.”
And [...]