Abbott Loses Drug Patent Suit with Centocor

Cited from NewYork Times. A unit of Johnson & Johnson said Monday that a jury has ordered Abbott Laboratories to pay $1.67 billion in a patent infringement suit over rheumatoid arthritis drugs.

Abbott’s best-selling drug, Humira, competes with the drug Remicade, an arthritis treatment made by the Centocor unit of Johnson & Johnson. That company and New York University filed a federal patent infringement suit against Abbott in April 2007 in the Eastern District of Texas.

The product belongs to a class of drugs known as anti-TNF, which block tumor necrosis factor proteins in the blood. When present in excessive amounts, TNF can cause inflammation.

“We are particularly gratified that the jury recognized our valuable intellectual property, finding our patent both valid and infringed,” Kim Taylor, president of Centocor Ortho Biotech, said in a statement. Humira has been a major success for Abbott, which has been approved for uses psoriasis and Crohn’s disease. Abbott had $4.5 billion in Humira sales in 2008.

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Australia – Innovation Patent

The Australia has a separate Patent protection apart from regular utility Patent termed “Innovation patent”, is a protection option specifically designed to protect inventions that do not meet the inventive threshold required for standard patents. Introduced in 2001 to stimulate innovation among small to medium business and local industry, the innovation patent is a relatively fast way to obtain protection for your new device, substance, method or process.

Innovation patents are intended to provide intellectual property rights for those incremental and lower level inventions that would not be sufficiently inventive to qualify for a standard patent. This is due to the inventive threshold being lowered compared to a standard patent, that is, the innovation patent requires an innovative step rather than an inventive step.

An innovation patent doesn’t allow you to legally stop others from copying your innovation unless you have your innovation patent examined. Examination of an innovation patent will only occur if requested by the patentee, a third party or the commissioner of patents. An innovation patent is only legally enforceable and certified if it has been examined by IP Australia and has met the requirements of the Patents Act.