AltaThera hits competitor with trade secret suit
Suit claims a contractor used AltaThera secrets to launch a rival heart arrhythmia drug | Chicago-based company wants the court to add its founder as co-inventor on patent.
Pharma company AltaThera Pharmaceuticals has accused Hyloris Pharmaceuticals of using stolen trade secrets to develop its heart arrhythmia drug.
According to the suit—filed Tuesday, August 30 at the US District Court for the Northern District of Illinois—an Illinois-based consultant hired by AltaThera and Hyloris was “secretly working together to take AltaThera’s novel ideas, confidential drafts and materials, market research, and know-how”.
AltaThera is the exclusive distributor in the US of sotalol hydrochloride injection for intravenous use (Sotalol IV), which is an antiarrhythmic agent.
AltaThera said that it had invested millions of dollars over several years to develop an innovative method for administering Sotalol IV in a way that would allow patients who would otherwise need to spend three days in the hospital to spend only one day there.
However, AltaThera then shared its confidential material (including its one-day dosing method for Sotalol IV and related business and commercial strategies) with a longtime consultant and Hyloris, from which AltaThera had licensed Sotalol IV.
The suit claimed that the consultant and Hyloris were using this confidential information to bring a competing antiarrhythmic drug to market: intravenous dofetilide (Dofetilide IV)
"By the time AltaThera learned that defendants were using its confidential information and intellectual property to pursue a competing product, defendants were already two years into their efforts to obtain patent protection and FDA approval for a Dofetilide IV one-day dosing method. They expect to bring the product to market in 2023,” alleged the suit.
AltaThera claimed that the consultant copied “verbatim significant portions of a highly confidential patent application he helped prepare for AltaThera into a patent application for Dofetilide IV in his own name, and in doing so failed to identify the inventive contributions of AltaThera’s founder, Brandon Kashfian”.
In addition to seeking damages, disgorgement of “ill-gotten” profits and injunctive relief, AltaThera is seeking a declaration that it is the owner of US patent application number 16/449,796 and any patents that issue from that application/claim priority to that application, including US patent application number 17/380,413.
It has asked the court correct the inventorship of the '213 patent by adding Kashfian as a co-inventor of the subject matter claimed.
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