Takeda subsidiary ordered to pay Bayer $182m after overturn bid fails
A Takeda subsidiary cannot overturn a $155 million jury verdict that it infringed one of Bayer’s patents, a district court has ruled.
In an opinion on August 23, the US District Court for the District of Delaware denied Baxalta’s motion for a new trial on damages.
Additionally, the court also granted Bayer’s motion for supplementary damages, awarding the company an additional $27 million on top of the $155 million damages it previously secured.
The court awarded supplementary damages worth $18.8 million covering November 2018 to the date of the court ruling in February this year. On top of that sum, the court also awarded pre-judgment interest of $8.3 million.
Baxalta sought to overturn the verdict after Bayer won royalties from sales of Baxalta’s haemophilia drug Adynovate earlier this year.
Adynovate is used to control bleeding in patients with haemophilia A.
In February, jurors found that Adynovate infringed Bayer’s IP after Bayer sued Baxalta in December 2016.
Bayer accused the company of infringing its patent for ‘Factor VIII conjugates’ (US number 9,364,520), a complex protein used as part of a treatment for haemophilia A.
In the original complaint, Bayer claimed that it had developed the science behind the ‘520 patent partly in cooperation with American biopharmaceutical company Nektar Therapeutics. Bayer ended its relationship with Nektar in 2004.
Nektar entered into a licensing agreement with Baxalta’s original parent company Baxter International in 2005. The purpose of the deal was to develop a Factor VIII-based haemophilia treatment, the suit said.
Takeda acquired Baxalta in January 2019.
Bayer argued that the resulting product, Adynovate, infringed “each and every element” of claims 1 and 9 in the ‘520 patent.
The company requested an order enjoining the defendants from any further infringing activity, as well as damages and costs owing to their “willful infringement” of Bayer’s patent.
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