Bass targets the University of Pennsylvania in IPR petitions

Hedge fund manager Kyle Bass’s group the Coalition for Affordable Drugs has targeted two patents owned by the University of Pennsylvania in the latest petition for an inter partes review (IPR).

The patents, US numbers 7,932,268 and 8,618,135, are used in the Juxtapid drug, which is intended to reduce the level of cholesterol in the human body.

The patents were issued in 2011 and 2013.

Bass has targeted the patents on the grounds that they are obvious.

“They [the patents] merely claim methods of using a known drug, to treat known medical conditions, for which the drug was known to be effective, with known dose-titration methods disclosed in the prior art,” the petition stated.

Bass argued that there is a public interest for the Patent Trial and Appeal Board (PTAB) to institute an IPR.

According to the petition, Juxtapid is sold for around $900 per pill and costs nearly $330,000 per patient per year.

“The public has a significant interest in ensuring monopoly privileges are not granted by an invalid patent,” the petition added.

Last week, the PTAB knocked back the coalition’s request for an IPR against two Acorda Therapeutics patents that centred on the company’s multiple sclerosis drug Ampyra (dalfampridine).

A separate dispute involving Bass’s coalition and another drug maker Celgene heated up earlier this month after the hedge fund manager responded to the biotechnology company’s motion to sanction him for filing “abusive” IPRs.

Celgene argued that Bass lacked a “competitive interest” in filing the petition.

Bass hit back on August 11. He said that “having an economic motive for petitioning the government simply does not turn the petition into an abuse of the process”.