Federal Circuit clears UCB of Cimzia patent infringement

The US Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit affirmed a ruling from a district court yesterday in a case between UCB and Yeda Research and Development, finding that UCB did not infringe the patent in dispute.

UCB sued Yeda in August 2014 in the US District Court for the Eastern District of Virginia, requesting that the court declare that UCB’s Cimzia (certolizumab pegol) product does not infringe Yeda’s US patent number 6,090,923.

It also sought to prove that the ‘923 patent is invalid, with Yeda counterclaiming for infringement.

Cimzia is a treatment for Crohn’s disease as well as some inflammatory conditions.

The district court found that UCB was not infringing Yeda’s patent, a ruling which was followed by the  Federal Circuit.

Yeda’s ‘923 patent protects a monoclonal antibody that binds a defined human cytotoxin. The question in the case was whether the monoclonal antibody includes chimeric or humanised antibodies, when the patent specification describes only murine monoclonal antibodies.

According to the Federal Circuit: “The district court granted summary judgment of non-infringement, holding that, based on the specification and prosecution history, the monoclonal antibodies claimed in the ’923 patent are not infringed by the chimeric or humanised antibodies of the Cimzia product.”

The court said in the ruling: “We conclude that the district court correctly applied the law, and we affirm the holding that Yeda is estopped from including chimeric and humanised antibodies within the scope of the monoclonal antibodies claimed in the ‘923 patent.”