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14 August 2019GeneticsSarah Morgan

Eli Lilly unit accuses Alzheimer's institute of ‘malicious’ patent prosecution

Avid Radiopharmaceuticals, a subsidiary of Eli Lilly, has taken the Alzheimer's Institute of America (AIA) to court over its “malicious” prosecution of a patent infringement case.

Back in 2010, AIA accused Avid of infringing two US patents, numbers 5,455,169 and 7,538,258, both of which were “generally directed to research technologies stemming from the discovery of the Swedish mutation’, a genetic mutation associated with early-onset familial Alzheimer's disease”.

In response, Avid argued that AIA’s founder Ronald Sexton and Dr Michael Mullan had “orchestrated a scheme to appropriate for themselves inventions from Imperial College in London and the University of South Florida (USF)”.

This scheme began when members of Dr John Hardy's Imperial research group (which included Mullan) made the ”groundbreaking discovery of one of the first gene mutations that causes Alzheimer's disease”, said Avid.

A jury, at the US District Court for the Eastern District of Pennsylvania, concluded that AIA lacked standing to assert the patents and entered judgment in favour of Avid.

Five years later, the Pennsylvanian court concluded that the suit was an exceptional case, entitling Avid to an award of attorneys’ fees and finding that AIA’s filing of the suit was “nothing more than a perpetuation of the conspiracy”.

In granting Avid’s motion for fees, the court said: “The evidence at trial amply showed that Ronald Sexton, AIA's principal, had conspired with John Hardy and Michael Mullan to defraud USF and Imperial College in London of their ownership rights in the invention.”

According to the court, they had agreed not to list Hardy as a co-inventor on the patent application, leaving Mullan as the sole inventor and assigning the patent rights to AIA.

"In furtherance of their conspiracy to deprive USF and Imperial College of ownership rights in the invention, Sexton, Hardy and Mullan agreed to omit Hardy's name from any publication reporting the discovery of the Swedish mutation,” said the court.

In 2016, Avid was awarded nearly $4 million in attorneys’ fees, which s later affirmed by the US Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit.

Now, in a case filed at the same Pennsylvanian court on Monday, August 12, Avid has made a claim for malicious prosecution.

“AIA and Sexton's conduct in prosecuting the Avid Lawsuit constituted trickery and deceit, as the Avid court so held, and therefore their conduct warrants the imposition of punitive damages, said the suit.

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