Delaware judge throws out Pfizer’s $107.5M Tagrisso patent win over AstraZeneca
Delaware judge throws out Pfizer’s $107.5M Tagrisso patent win over AstraZeneca
AstraZeneca on Wednesday was successful in reversing Pfizer’s previous legal victory in a patent tussle over the British-Swedish pharma’s cancer drug Tagrisso (osimertinib), with a Delaware judge nullifying the previous jury award and invalidating the patents in the lawsuit.
Delaware District Judge Matthew Kennelly’s decision reverses the previous $107.5 million in damages, which a federal jury awarded to Pfizer’s subsidiary Wyeth in May 2024. In his ruling against Pfizer, Kennelly agreed that the two Pfizer patents were invalid for lack of enablement, referring to a written description of the technologies in contention sufficient to instruct professionals capable of carrying out the inventions under contention.
Pfizer’s Wyeth unit sued AstraZeneca in 2021 claiming infringement of two key patents. The pharma alleged that AstraZeneca’s Tagrisso violates protections covering methods of using an EGFR blocker to treat non-small cell lung cancer (NSCLC) patients who are resistant to gefitinib and/or erlotinib.
Tagrisso also allegedly infringed on another patent that protected the use of irreversible EGFR inhibitors to treat gefitinib- or erlotinib-resistant NSCLC patients carrying a certain EGFR mutation, according to Pfizer. Both technologies are used by Wyeth’s and Puma Biotechnology’s Nerlynx (neratinib), which is indicated for HER2-positive breast cancer. The drug made more than $200 million in 2023.
In his ruling on Wednesday, Kennelly agreed with AstraZeneca that Pfizer failed to provide sufficient instruction that would otherwise have allowed a practitioner with requisite skills to carry out the invention in question.
