Friday's "Patent of the Week": The BILLION Dollar Patent

We have selected U.S. Patent No. 7,070,775 covering antibodies against tumor necrosis factor as this Friday’s “Patent of the Week.” The ‘775 patent is exclusively licensed by Johnson & Johnson, the maker of the drug Remicade. Abbott Labs markets a competing medicine Humira, which is used to reduce treat arthritis, psoriasis, Crohn's disease, and ankylosing spondylitis, and had $4.5 billion in sales last year.

Last week, in the largest patent verdict in U.S. history, an Eastern District of Texas jury held Abbott's drug Humira to infringe that patent, and award J&J $1.67 billion in damages (Centocor (Johnson & Johnson) & NYU v. Abbott Labs (E.D.Tex. 2009)). The jury also found Abbott to be a willful infringer of J&J’s patent.

The litigation is far from over. The court must now decide whether to uphold the verdict, and whether the adjudged willful infringement warrants additional damages, which could theoretically triple the award. Furthermore, as expected, Abbott is planning to appeal the verdict. Abbott argues that the human antibodies used in Humira could not have been covered by the ‘775 patent, since J&J admits that it did not work on the fully human antibody until after the filing of the patent application. But with this much money on the line, even Dr. Evil raises an eyebrow.

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