Jul. 9 at 8:44 PM
A U.S. appeals court upheld a lower court ruling in favor of AstraZeneca in its patent dispute with Pfizer subsidiary Wyeth over blockbuster lung cancer drug Tagrisso, concluding that the two patents asserted by Wyeth are invalid. The Federal Circuit agreed that the patents lacked sufficient written descriptions and would require undue experimentation for a skilled scientist to reproduce the claimed inventions.
Wyeth, which Pfizer acquired in 2009, filed the lawsuit in 2021, alleging that Tagrisso infringed patents related to breast cancer drug Nerlynx, marketed by Puma Biotechnology under a licensing agreement with Pfizer. Although a Delaware jury awarded Wyeth
$107.5 million in damages in 2024, the trial judge later overturned that verdict, and the appeals court has now affirmed the decision. The ruling removes a significant legal overhang for AstraZeneca, whose Tagrisso generated more than
$7.2 billion in global revenue last year.
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