Top Canadian Court to hear COVERSYL patent case?
The Supreme Court of Court will decide this week whether to hear an appeal of the Servier case. This is a pharmaceutical patent case involving an ACE inhibitor marketed under the brand name Coversyl.
Both trial and appellate courts concluded that Apotex, the generic drug maker, was infringing the ADIR/Servier patent. Apotex has now appealed to the Supreme Court of Canada.
A summary of the case is on the Court’s docket site:
Intellectual property - Patents - Medicines - Infringement action - Validity of patent - Whether the invention of a patent may be distinct from the invention applied for by a patentee - Whether the invention or inventive concept of a patent may be discerned from the claims and specification as a whole or whether the claims of a patent may each disclose and define a separate invention or inventive concept
The Respondents ADIR and Servier Canada Inc. (collectively, “Servier”) brought an action against the Applicants (collectively, “Apotex”) alleging Apotex was infringing its ‘196 patent by manufacturing and selling its generic version of the drug, perindopril, in Canada and abroad, for the treatment of hypertension and cardiac insufficiency. Servier’s work to develop its drug, an angiotensin-converting enzyme (“ACE”) inhibitor, commenced in 1977. Along with other innovator companies, Servier was conducting research to improve upon the original ACE inhibitor drug, captopril, in order to reduce its side effects. In 1980, Merck & Co. disclosed at a conference that it had developed a new ACE inhibitor, enalapril, that improved upon captopril. Following this, researchers turned their attention to building improvements to the enalapril molecule. Schering Corporation obtained patent ‘206 for its ACE inhibitor, ramipril. Servier’s work focussed on the use of bicyclic rings in place of proline on the Merck enalapril “backbone,” using non-ACE inhibitor prior art, and the results were excellent. Servier was granted the ‘196 patent for the entiomerically-pure salt of this compound for perindopril in 1996, one of several companies awarded patents for similar drugs. Apotex obtained a notice of compliance for its generic version of perindopril tablets in 2007. Servier brought an action against Apotex for patent infringement. Apotex raised several defences based on allegations of patent invalidity and counterclaimed for damages for alleged violations of the Competition Act.
The case is: Apotex Inc. et al. v. ADIR et al. (F.C.) (Civil) (By Leave) (33357)
The decision regarding leave to appeal is to be delivered at 9:45 A.M. EDT on Thursday, March 25, 2010.
Links:
Federal Court and Federal Court of Appeal decisions.
