The following is excerpted from an August 15, 2011 article by Phil Milford published by Bloomberg:
Pfizer Inc. (PFE) won a patent- infringement case that prevents Teva Pharmaceutical Industries Ltd. (TEVA) from marketing a generic version of the impotence drug Viagra until 2019.
U.S. District Judge Rebecca Beach Smith in Norfolk, Virginia, ruled Aug. 12 against Petach Tikva, Israel-based Teva, which claimed the patent wasn’t valid and couldn’t be enforced.
“Teva has not shown by clear and convincing evidence that the patent is invalid,” Smith said in a 110-page opinion. In addition, “there is utterly no evidence” to support Teva’s claim that that Pfizer intentionally withheld documents from the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office, Smith wrote.
The ruling was “a surprise,” Bloomberg Industries analyst Asthika Goonewardene said in an interview.
“The patent was a method-of-use patent, and usually these don’t hold up that well in court for small molecular drugs,” Goonewardene said. “The court’s decision to uphold this patent means other filers wanting to enter in 2012 are not likely to do so then.”
Read the full article here.
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