Judge overturns HCV patent ruling in Merck-Gilead case
A federal judge reversed a jury's decision in March that had upheld two HCV patents and had awarded $200 million in damages to Merck & Co. Inc. (NYSE:MRK) and Ionis Pharmaceuticals Inc. (NASDAQ:IONS) from Gilead Sciences Inc. (NASDAQ:GILD). In her decision Monday, Judge Beth Labson Freeman of the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California wrote that "egregious misconduct" by a Merck attorney made the patents unenforceable (see BioCentury Extra, March 25).
The court found that an attorney responsible for prosecuting Merck's U.S. Patents Nos. 7,105,499 and 8,481,712 was included in licensing discussions that disclosed the structure of compounds from Pharmasset Inc., which Gilead later acquired. According to Freeman's decision, the attorney incorporated information from those discussions into the patents, then fabricated testimony concerning the discussions during a deposition and at trial. ...