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5 October 2018Americas

PTAB grants IPR win to Celltrion over Biogen

The Patent Trial and Appeal Board (PTAB) invalidated a patent owned by biotech company Biogen yesterday, handing a victory to South Korea-based Celltrion.

Biopharmaceutical company Celltrion filed a petition requesting inter partes review (IPR) of claims 1 to 6 of US patent number 9,296,821.

In October last year, the PTAB instituted review of claims 1 to 3, plus 5 and 6. However, following the US Supreme Court’s SAS Institute v Iancu ruling in April 2018, the board modified its institution decision to include claim 4 and all grounds presented in the petition.

However, Celltrion’s IPR petitions for claims in related US patent numbers 8,329,172 and 8,557,244, which were filed along with the petition for this proceeding, were denied.

Biogen’s ‘821 patent covers methods of treating B-cell lymphoma by administering chimeric anti-CD20 antibodies in combination with chemotherapy.

Celltrion alleged that all six claims were obvious in light of CVP chemotherapy plus rituximab compared with CVP as first-line treatment for advanced follicular lymphoma, a paper written by Marcus et al.

Celltrion also cited US patent number 5,736,137 (issued in 1998) and several other documents.

Yesterday, the PTAB sided with Celltrion in a final written decision, finding that all of the claims were obvious in light of the prior art or combinations of them.

“Accordingly, we determine that patent owner has not demonstrated that the invention of claim 6 provides results that would have been unexpected when compared to the results of the same method disclosed by Marcus,” said the board.

It added that Biogen hadn’t provided evidence of non-obviousness that outweighs the PTAB’s determination that the combination of Marcus and the ‘137 patent taught each limitation of claim 3 and 6.

The PTAB concluded that all of the claims were unpatentable.

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