UK High Court rules Roche patent is invalid

The English High Court has ruled that a patent owned by Roche should be revoked on grounds of insufficiency.

In a judgment on Wednesday July 17, Mr Justice Birss said the claims within the disputed patent “lack a technical contribution and are insufficient”.

The disputed patent (UK number 2,007,809) is entitled “Glycosylated Antibodies”.

The litigation arose when Roche sued Japan-based pharma company Takeda over its medicine, Entyvio (vedolizumab), which is used to treat ulcerative colitis and Crohn’s disease.

Roche alleged that the treatment infringes the ‘809 patent but Takeda denied this and sought to have the patent revoked on grounds of invalidity, claiming that the invention covered by the patent would be obvious to a skilled person.

In its judgment, the English High Court ruled that a skilled person in his case would be a team of people, who would “either have sufficient expertise themselves” to carry out the analysis covered by the claims of the patent, or would have access to the expertise through a third party.

The skilled team could set up a system needed to create the medicine, the court said.

It said that depending on how the system was set up and which machinery was used, the resulting product could either fall inside or outside the invention covered by the patent.

But, it said the claimed invention was “truly ambiguous”, so there could not be distinguished boundary. Therefore, it found the patent to be invalid.

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