PTAB shoots down Kyle Bass IPR request

Hedge fund manager Kyle Bass has been dealt a blow after failing to invalidate two patents owned by biotechnology company Acorda Therapeutics.

In a decision handed down on Monday, August 24, the US Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) said that Bass did not have enough evidence for it to review the patents, which centred on Acorda’s multiple sclerosis (MS) drug Ampyra (dalfampridine).

Bass is the owner of hedge fund Hayman Capital Management and set up a company called the Coalition for Affordable Drugs.

In the last few months the coalition has targeted patents belonging to biopharmaceutical companies by filing inter partes reviews (IPRs) at the USPTO’s Patent Trial and Appeal Board (PTAB) in an attempt to invalidate them.

Acorda’s patents, US numbers 8,663,685 and 8,007,826, protect the method for measuring Ampyra’s recommended dosage levels. The drug is used to help people suffering from MS to walk.

The ‘826 patent was approved in 2011 and the ‘685 patent in 2014.

Bass’s petition, filed in February this year, argued that the patents protected matter that was already known to scientists.

In May, Acorda hit back and urged the USPTO to reject the petition.

The coalition had cited two posters, known as ‘meeting posters’ and which were displayed at medical conventions, as evidence that prior art invalidated the patents.

The first, called the ‘Goodman poster’, was displayed at the Meeting of the Americas Committee for Treatment and Research in Multiple Sclerosis and the 18th Congress of the European Committee for Treatment and Research in Multiple Sclerosis, both held in 2002.

Another, known as the ‘Hayes poster’, was displayed at a meeting of the American Neurological Association in 2001.

But according to the PTAB, the coalition presented insufficient evidence concerning the expertise of the posters’ target audience and failed to show that someone could have copied the posters’ material.

In its decision to not institute an IPR, the PTAB added that the coalition “has not established that there is a reasonable likelihood that it would prevail with respect to at least one of the claims challenged in the petition”.

In a statement Acorda said: “The ‘685 and ‘826 patents are two of five Orange Book-listed patents that apply to Ampyra extended-release tablets, 10 mg. The patents are set to expire in 2025 and 2027, respectively.”