Drug company Abbvie wins patent dispute with charity

The District Court for the Southern District of New York found last month that several claims in the patent, owned by the Kennedy Institute, were invalid.

Before the ruling, the Kennedy Trust had collected more than $100 million in royalties from AbbVie on the patent and hundreds of millions more in royalties from competitors.

The case, AbbVie and AbbVie Biotechnology v The Kennedy Institute of Rheumatology Trust, concerned the Kennedy Institute’s claims relating to US patent 7,846,442, titled “Treatment of Autoimmune and Inflammatory Disorders”. It was argued in September 2012 and the ruling was delivered on June 20 this year.

Judge Paul Crotty found claims 1 through 7, 13, 14, and 17 through 20 invalid for obviousness, and denied the Kennedy Institute’s counterclaim for a declaratory judgment that the claims in question are not invalid.