AstraZeneca

Commonwealth seeks $60 million on the undertaking as to damages

Sanofi sued Apotex (then known as GenRx) for infringement of its “clopidogrel patent”. It obtained interlocutory injunctions against Apotex against the sale of Apotex’ product and preventing Apotex from applying to list its product under the Pharmaceutical Benefits scheme (PBS). As a condition of the grant of those interlocutory injunctions, Sanofi gave the “usual undertaking as to damages”:

“(a)          submit to such order (if any) as the Court may consider to be just for the payment of compensation, to be assessed by the Court or as it may direct, to any person whether or not a party, adversely affected by the operation of the interlocutory injunction or any continuation (with or without variation); and

“(b)          pay the compensation referred to in subpara (a) to the person or persons there referred to.”

Sanofi won at trial, but lost on appeal with the Full Court ordering its patent be revoked. Sanofi’s application for special leave to appeal to the High Court was refused on 12 March 2010.

Apotex sought compensation under the undertaking by motion in May 2010. Sanofi and Apotex resolved that application by negotiation.

The Commonwealth also sought compensation under the undertaking as to damages by application made in April 2013. If we did not know before, we now know the Commonwealth is seeking $60 million. Essentially, the Commonwealth contends that is how much less it would have had to pay out under the PBS if the interlocutory injunctions had not prevented Apotex applying to list its product under the PBS:

 

“The Commonwealth has provided some particulars of its damages. It alleges it has suffered financial loss in excess of $60 million as a result of Apotex being prevented by the various interlocutory orders and undertakings from achieving a listing for its clopidogrel products under the PBS. Most of the Commonwealth’s loss is said to flow from statutory price reductions and price disclosure reductions that would have occurred had Apotex not been the subject of the relevant interlocutory restraints.”

 

The case is a long way off resolution. Nicholas J has allowed Sanofi to amend its points of defence to the Commonwealth’s claim to rely on the Commonwealth’s delay in making its application for compensation and to rely on infringement of copyright in Sanofi’s product information documents. Sanofi will be required to particularise the prejudice its claims it suffered as a result of the delay.

Nicholas J however refused leave to amend to plead that the Full Court’s decision invalidating Sanofi’s patent was wrong in light of the Full Bench’s subsequent decision in AstraZeneca (rosuvastatin). That would be inconsistent with res judicata and the principle of finality of litigation.

Commonwealth of Australia v Sanofi-Aventis [2015] FCA 384

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Rosuvastatin goes to the High Court

The High Court has allowed special leave to appeal from the Full Federal Court’s decision in AstraZeneca v Apotex (“Rosuvastatin”).

From the special leave transcript, it looks like the main issue will be the operation of s 7(3) and the basis on which a reference ascertained for the purposes of s 7(3) may be combined with common general knowledge under s 7(2).

In Rosuvastatin, a Full Bench of 5 justices held that the “starting point” identified in the patent could be used as the “starting point” for testing whether the solution in the patent was obvious only when shown to be part of the prior art base. The Full Court nonetheless held the patent was invalid as a s 7(3) reference, the Watanabe paper, was added to the common general knowledge.

From the special leave transcript, it appears that all parties were in agreement that the person skilled in the art would undertake a literature search. The resulting search would have thrown up a number of documents. AstraZeneca argues that the Full Court erred in allowing the Watanabe paper to be used as a s 7(3) reference. Its main argument appears to be that the search would have thrown up at least 2 papers, Watanabe and Aoki. AstraZeneca argues that, before the Watanabe paper can be combined with common general knowledge under s 7(2), it needs to be shown that the person skilled in the art would have chosen the Watanabe paper over Aoki. According to AstraZeneca, however, the evidence did not establish that. Again according to Astrazeneca, there was evidence that the skilled person could choose either paper and, if Aoki was chosen, would fail:

If you had gone down the NK-104 path you fail – a relative fail. If you had gone down the other one, you win. The evidence of Professor O’Brien was – others can reasonably make one choice or another. Dr Reece did not even venture on the issue as to which one he would go down.

A second point that AstraZeneca argues is that to choose Watanabe the skilled person would have needed to refer first to Aoki. That is, it argues that it was necessary to engage in impermissible masoning.

If AstraZeneca succeeds, there will also be a dispute about entitlement issues and the operation of new s 22A and 138(4).

No doubt more will become clearer when the appeal documents are posted on the High Court’s website.

Astrazeneca AB & Anor v Apotex Pty Ltd; Astrazeneca AB & Anor v Watson Pharma Pty Ltd; Astrazeneca AB & Anor v Ascent Pharma Pty Ltd [2015] HCATrans 58

 

Rosuvastatin goes to the High Court Read More »

Five Judges speak with one voice on Australian Patent Law Construction and Fair Basis*

The Rosuvastatin case is that rare beast – a decision of a 5 member Full Bench of the Federal Court. It canvases many issues and, no doubt, we shall be picking over it for years to come. Susan Gatford, at the Victorian Bar, has kindly provided a guest post on the section 40 issues. Take it way Sue:

The judgment in AstraZeneca AB v Apotex Pty Ltd [2014] FCAFC 99 is an authoritative statement by a Full Court of the Federal Court of current patent law in Australia on novelty, obviousness, fair basis and indirect infringement. Further, neither the parties nor the Full Court at [37] demurred from the primary judge’s summary of the relevant authorities as to what constitutes common general knowledge and the attributes of the hypothetical skilled addressee. Likewise, neither the parties nor the Full Court at [90] disagreed with the primary judge’s exposition of the principles governing the construction of the claims and body of a specification of a patent.

The Full Court was principally constituted with five justices so as to address issues in regard to obviousness[1]. But the decisions at first instance and on appeal, taken together, also provide a “go to” exposition of most of the legal issues that commonly arise in Australian patent cases.

The Court’s views on the different validity grounds and on indirect infringement each warrant separate commentary and analysis. This article considers one of the construction issues, the decision as to fair basis and the interplay between construction and fair basis.

Background

Statins are a group of drugs that reduce the levels of cholesterol in the blood. Rosuvastatin (marketed in Australia as CRESTOR) is a very successful statin. No patent was ever filed in Australia for the rosuvastatin chemical compound. But AstraZeneca (Az) owns a number of secondary Australian patents relating to rosuvastatin. Two such patents are the subject of the appeal decision. One (the low dose patent) is for the administration of a particular dose or dosage range of rosuvastatin for the treatment of excess cholesterol in the blood stream. The other (the cation patent) is for a pharmaceutical composition (combination) of rosuvastatin mixed with certain inorganic salts.

The Full Federal Court’s decision affirms, although with some differences of reasoning and grounds, Apotex’s victory last year before Justice Jagot, in which it obtained orders revoking both patents.

The outcome of the appeal

The low dose patent was held:

  • to have named the wrong inventor (with a discussion of the current and former entitlement provisions of the Patents Act);
  • to be obvious (with a discussion of the starting point at which obviousness is to be considered and the impact of section 7 of the Patents Act); and
  • not to have been infringed (with a discussion of section 117 of the Patents Act)
  • 

However, reversing the decision of the primary judge, the Full Court held that the low dose patent was novel despite the existence of prior publications disclosing both rosuvastatin and a dosage range that covered the dosage range the subject of the claims.

The cation patent was held:

  • to have impermissibly claimed too early a priority date;
  • to have been anticipated (not novel);
  • to be obvious; and
  • not to be fairly based on the specification (despite the presence of claim 1 as a consistory clause within the body of the specification).

The five judges agreed with each other on all issues. Justices Besanko, Foster, Nicholas and Yates wrote a joint judgment which dealt with all issues except obviousness. Justice Jessup wrote a separate judgment on obviousness with which the rest of the Court agreed.

Patent construction and section 40 issues in relation to the cation patent.

The cation patent was for rosuvastatin mixed with certain multivalent cation inorganic salts. The salts were not therapeutic – their role was said to be simply to stabilize the rosuvastatin and prevent it from degrading. The patent specification described rosuvastatin and various salts being mixed together into a tablet which was then coated.
There was a disagreement between the parties as to the meaning of the words “pharmaceutical composition” in claim 1 of the cation patent. Apotex submitted that in the context of the cation patent “pharmaceutical composition” referred only to the rosuvastatin-salt mixture, and did not include the tablet coating. This was because the proposed Apotex product did not have a rosuvastatin-salt mixture – in its tablet the salt was placed into the coating, not mixed with the rosuvastatin.

Az, in order to maintain its infringement case, argued that the words “pharmaceutical composition” in claim 1 meant the whole tablet i.e. the means by which rosuvastatin is administered or delivered to the patient, whatever form that takes. The primary judge agreed with Az, as did the Full Court.

But, Apotex said, if this is what claim 1 means then it is not fairly based on the specification, as there is no real and reasonably clear disclosure in the specification of a pharmaceutical composition in which the relevant inorganic salt is contained solely within the coating of the pharmaceutical composition and not mixed with the active ingredient, being rosuvastatin. They noted that every disclosure in the cation patent of the use of a relevant salt, including in each of the examples, involved the salt being mixed or blended with rosuvastatin. They also noted that the only theory advanced in the specification to explain how the multivalent cation salt improved the stability of rosuvastatin was that it stabilised its chemical structure, which the experts’ evidence confirmed required “intimate mixing”.

Az did not dispute this evidence but submitted that the fact that claim 1 was repeated in the body of the specification as a consistory clause was itself sufficient for fair basis, relying on statements in Lockwood Security Products Pty Limited v Doric Products Pty Limited (2004) 217 CLR 274 (Doric No 1) at [38] and [91] to [93]. The primary judge had agreed with that submission.

The Full Court, however, disagreed. It said at [421]

“The question that must be addressed is whether there is a real and reasonably clear disclosure in the specification of an invention in which there might be no mixture of the active ingredient and inorganic salt. In our opinion, the specification, when read as a whole, does not make any such disclosure even in the most general sense.”

In other words, the claim was for a composition which contained three things – rosuvastatin, salt and a coating. The claim did not require the salt and the rosuvastatin to be mixed, so the salt could either be with the rosuvastatin or in the coating. In the invention disclosed in the specification, though, the salt and the rosuvastatin were always mixed. The possibility of the salt not being mixed with the rosuvastatin was not contemplated and not disclosed.

Section 40(3) of the Patents Act as applied to this patent (i.e. as it stood before the 2013 amendments to the Patents Act) requires that “the claim or claims must be … fairly based on the matter disclosed in the specification”.

The Court’s finding of lack of fair basis refocuses attention on the construction of claim 1 contended for by Apotex. But the Court was not prepared, in light of the authorities, to read claim 1 as requiring the salt and the rosuvastatin to be mixed, as it considered that to do so would be to draw an impermissible gloss from the specification.

The Court was, however, prepared to use section 40 to strike down what it evidently regarded as a claim that was too widely drawn. Whether the judgment will result in an increase in the number of successful challenges based on section 40 grounds remains to be seen.

AstraZeneca AB v Apotex Pty Ltd [2014] FCAFC 99

 

Thanks, Sue.


  1. As to which see Mark Summerfeild’s recent blog post  ?

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Misusing a patentee’s market power

The Court of General Instance (formerly (?) the EU’s CFI) has upheld the European Commission’s ruling that AstraZeneca abused its dominant position in the market by practices designed to block or delay generic drugs competing with Losec from entering the market.

The abusive practices were:

  1. submitting deliberately misleading statements to patent agents, national patent offices and national courts in order to acquire or preserve supplementary protections certificates for omeprazole to which AstraZeneca was not entitled or to which it was entitled for a shorter duration; and
  2. requesting (and obtaining) the withdrawal of regulatory marketing authorisations for Losec capsules and replacing those marketing authorisations with marketing authorisations for Losec MUPS tablets.

The result of the second practice was to delay entry on to the market of competing generic products as they could not use the abridged marketing approval process.

The Court did reduce, however, the fine from Euros 60 million to Euros 52.5 million.

The case concerned patents for omeprazole, the patent protection for which has generated some controversy in Australia.

Like the EU, Australian law does provide for supplementary protection certificates and there is the potential for abridged marketing approval processes for generics (pdf – e.g). Art. 82 of the Treaty also has some resemblance to s 46 of the TPA and, while we might think that the EU has a fairly idiosyncratic approach to determining market power, the Hoffman-La Roche ruling relied on by the Court of General Instance has been referred to with approval by the High Court in Australia.

Case T?321/05 AstraZeneca AB v Commission

which has been conveniently summarised by Linklaters and Gibson Dunn.

Now, we might think this is an application of the peculiar EU approach to

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