IPR & Legal

The European Medicines Agency (EMA) has been told it will have to continue servicing the lease covering its former London headquarters even as it completes plans for a move to Amsterdam. The move to Amsterdam follows the UK’s 2016 vote to leave the EU.

The UK High Court ruled on 20 February that the move “was not required as a matter of law.” Therefore the agency’s rental contract remains in force along with the landlord’s right to collect rent. The case was brought by the property company Canary Wharf Ltd.

The EMA is reportedly studying its options for an appeal.

Patent litigation involving two of Europe’s most important antibody companies plus Janssen Biotech formally ended on 31 January after the parties agreed to drop their mutual claims. The lawsuit was brought by MorphoSys AG against Genmab A/S and its partner Janssen relating to Darzalex (daratumumab), the latter companies’ marketed drug for multiple myeloma.

A US district court has ruled against MorphoSys AG in a patent infringement suit that the Germany company brought against Genmab A/S and its partner Janssen Biotech Inc relating to Darzalex (daratumumab), their marketed drug for multiple myeloma.

The decision, by the District Court of Delaware, means that MorphoSys’ claims for damage have been rejected and its three US patents for a similar drug have been declared invalid.

The UK, on the basis of a democratic decision, can unilaterally revoke a decision to withdraw from the EU as long as the withdrawal agreement has not entered into force, the Court of Justice of the European Union, announced on 10 December.

With the introduction on 25 May of data protection regulations for companies inside the European Community and the outside companies that trade with Europe, a new entity called the European Data Protection Board (EDPB) began operations by holding a press conference in Brussels.

The data protection board consists of heads of national data protection agencies and has powers that are independent of the European Commission as it was created by an act of the European Parliament.

ViiV Healthcare Ltd, the specialist HIV company majority-owned by GlaxoSmithKline Plc, has filed a patent infringement suit against Gilead Sciences Inc over bictegravir, an integrase inhibitor that is part of a combination therapy approved in the US on 7 February.

The US law firm, Hagens Berman Sobol Shapiro LLP, has filed a class action suit against Sanofi SA, Novo Nordisk A/S and Eli Lilly and Company alleging that they have used increasingly wider discounts from the list price of their analogue insulins to gain favour with pharmacy benefit managers and health insurers and thereby gained market share.

Four companies with rights to intellectual property (IP) generated by Emmanuelle Charpentier and colleagues for the gene editing technology CRISPR/Cas9 have reached an agreement under which rights to the technology given by one member of the group will mean consent from the others.

The European Medicines Agency has appealed against a court order preventing it from releasing documents relating to two marketed medicines, arguing that the disclosures are consistent with its policy on transparency.

In a decision on 8 September, the General Court of the European Union has upheld €150 million of fines imposed by the European Commission on H. Lundbeck A/S and four generic companies for what it says were infringements of competition law.