Case law regarding written description is in a state of flux so it is beneficial for the patent practitioner to understand some key Federal Circuit decisions involving the written description requirement.
One might ask why a separate written description of the invention is needed in the specification when the claims are there to define the subject matter of the invention. The reason is historical.
The U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Tennessee answered what it acknowledged was a novel question: whether statistical sampling and extrapolation are appropriate to establish liability under the False Claims Act (FCA). The court found the government could extrapolate from a sample of patient records to prove FCA liability. While the court’s decision approved the use of sampling, it emphasized the defendant could challenge the government’s methodology and that the government was not using sampling to prove all of the elements of the alleged FCA violations.
Husch Blackwell received significant recognition as a top litigation firm in the 2015 edition of Benchmark Litigation’s annual nationwide rankings. The list includes 8 healthcare attorneys from the firm’s Illinois and Missouri offices. Husch Blackwell had 22 attorneys total named on the list.
Husch Blackwell’s Litigation practice received the commendable “Recommended” ranking in Missouri and Nebraska, and the firm was reputed to have “one of the strongest toxic and mass tort practices in the country.”
Dietary supplements represent a huge sector of the consumer market and changes in both intellectual property law and the regulations governing the market entry and advertising of these products is changing.
The new America Invents Act allows anyone to challenge the validity of patents under the inter partes review (IPR) process. In a Sept. 9 webinar, Husch Blackwell Partner Joseph Cwik, who recently won the first pharmaceutical IPR case, will provide an overview of this new process and explain how it is more cost-effective, efficient and successful than the traditional litigation.
The Kentucky Supreme Court issued an opinion Aug. 21, 2014, (Tibbs v. Bunnell, Ky., No. 2012-SC-000603-MR) in which it held that the incident report developed by the University of Kentucky Hospital (“hospital”), through the hospital’s Patient Safety Evaluation System (“PSES”), following the death of a patient, was not protected as patient safety work product (“PSWP”) under the Patient Safety and Quality Improvement Act of 2005 (the “Act”).
The Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (ACA) has always faced tremendous challenges due to the sheer magnitude of both the changes it authorized and the people it will impact. Now two different Federal Circuit Courts of Appeal have made the law’s implementation even more difficult by issuing conflicting rulings on the same day.
The attorney-client privilege applies with equal force to internal investigations today as it did 30 years ago thanks to the D.C. Circuit’s recent decision in In re: Kellogg Brown & Root, Inc., No. 14-5055 (D.C. Cir. June 27, 2014). The appeals court decision vacates the March 6, 2014, district court decision in the same case. At the district court, Judge James Gwin ruled that the attorney-client privilege did not protect documents developed during KBR’s internal investigations of potential fraud relating to its LOGCAP III contract. According to Judge Gwin, KBR’s investigations were not privileged because they were conducted “pursuant to regulatory law and corporate policy rather than for the purpose of obtaining legal advice.”
Several parts of the America Invents Act (the “AIA”) became law on Sept. 16, 2012, sparking some of the most meaningful changes to patent law seen in decades. One hot provision in the new law is the ability for one to challenge a patent’s validity in a new inter partes review (“IPR”) process. This legal tool could prove to be very valuable in solving some of the biggest business challenges facing generic pharma. This post addresses the business case for generic pharma using the IPR process.
The author wishes to thank Andrew M. Hodgson for his assistance in preparing this post. Andrew is an Associate in the Firm’s Chattanooga office.
As I approach the quarter century mark of my practice as a tort, healthcare and commercial litigator, predominately on the defense side, I reflect on some of the land mines that face the defense bar. These land mines include missing an affirmative defense, failing to join a necessary party, failing to enlist the services of all the expert witnesses needed to combat the plaintiff’s claims, and the list goes on. Even so, I would argue that none of these potential pitfalls can hold a candle to the specter of statutes of limitations and pre-suit requirements facing the plaintiff’s bar. In Tennessee, as in many states, those hurdles are magnified by pre-suit notices and other filings required of the plaintiff in making a healthcare liability claim. In November, the Supreme Court of Tennessee highlighted the importance of “crossing all your t’s and dotting all your i’s” when making such a claim in the case of Stevens v. Hickman Community Healthcare Services, Inc., No. M2012-00582-SC-S09-CV (Tenn. filed Nov. 25, 2013). Importantly, the Stevens court also made instructive rulings as to HIPAA preemption and a defendant’s right to receive records in healthcare liability actions.
Pfizer, Inc. recently petitioned the Supreme Court, seeking review of three companion decisions from the First Circuit Court of Appeals. These decisions found against Pfizer and in favor of multiple third-party payors (TPPs)—the Kaiser Foundation Health Plan, Inc. (an HMO), Aetna, Inc. (a health insurer), and a putative class of employer health plans—on civil Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act (RICO) claims for damages suffered due to Pfizer’s fraudulent marketing of off-label uses for the prescription drug Neurontin, an anti-convulsive approved for the treatment of epilepsy. At the heart of the dispute is causation—the causal chain that runs from a drug manufacturer, such as Pfizer, to third-party payors of prescription drug benefits, such as HMOs, insurers and other health plans.
The First Circuit’s lead opinion—laying the common predicate necessary to understand each of the companion cases—came in the action brought against Pfizer by Kaiser, in which the court affirmed a $142 million jury award to the HMO.
Neurontin was developed during the 1980s and early 1990s as an anti-epileptic drug. In 1993, the Food and Drug Administration approved Neurontin for treatment of partial seizures in adults with epilepsy. A campaign to market Neurontin for off-label conditions—conditions not included on the official label approved by the FDA—began in 1995. These off-label conditions included neuropathic pain (pain from nerve damage), migraine headaches, and bipolar disorder. Neurontin was marketed for treatment of these off-label conditions by way of, among other things: (1) direct marketing to doctors, which misrepresented Neurontin’s effectiveness for off-label indications; (2) misleading information supplements and continuing medical education programs; and (3) articles published in medical journals that touted Neurontin’s off-label effectiveness but suppressed negative information about the drug.
