Teva Pharmaceutical Industries Ltd. (NYSE: TEVA; TASE: TEVA) has lost a legal battle over the patent on a cancer drug produced by Eli Lilly and Company (LLY). Eli Lilly announced that it received a favorable ruling in a lawsuit against related to the infringement of patent for its cancer drug Alimta by the US Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit. Alimta has annual sales of some $1 billion. Teva sought to produce a generic version of the drug, which is administered by injection in the treatment of lung cancer. In effect, Eli Lilly received patent protection on the drug until 2022.
The Court of Appeals confirmed a decision from 2015 by a lower court on the validity of Alimta’s vitamin regimen patent. In 2015, the US District Court for the Southern District of Indiana ruled that Teva’s wholly owned subsidiary, Teva Parenteral Medicines, Inc.’s proposed generic version of Alimta would infringe the branded drug’s vitamin regimen patent.
The decision is part of the routine of challenges by generics companies of patents on branded drugs and is not of critical significance for Teva but the company has for some time been suffering from negative sentiment, which reached a head last week when Teva published a disappointing outlook for 2017, send its share price below $35.
Teva's share price is flat on the Tel Aviv Stock exchange this morning.
Published by Globes [online], Israel business news - www.globes-online.com - on January 15, 2017
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