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25 October 2019AmericasSarah Morgan

AbbVie and AstraZeneca settle cancer drug patent suits

AbbVie and AstraZeneca reached a settlement over patent suits involving their rival cancer drugs earlier this week, after nearly two years of litigation.

On Wednesday, October 23, District Judge Richard Andrews of the US District Court for the District of Delaware granted the joint stipulation of dismissal, which had been filed the day before.

Back in November 2017, AbbVie’s Pharmacyclics unit sued AstraZeneca and its subsidiary Acerta, shortly after the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) approved kinase inhibitor Calaquence (acalabrutinib) to treat mantle cell lymphoma.

According to the claim, Calaquence was infringing patents that covered Pharmacyclics’  kinase inhibitor Imbruvica (ibrutinib), which is also FDA-approved to treat mantle cell lymphoma.

AstraZeneca responded with its own suit the following year, alleging that Pharmacyclics was infringing a patent through the sale of Imbruvica.

The dispute was referred to mediation in October last year, before the parties submitted a request to dismiss the suit with prejudice earlier this week.

Terms of the settlement remain confidential.

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