Pharmaceuticals

The U.S. Food and Drug Administration (“FDA”) panel’s unanimous recommendation to approve Sandoz’ application for a filgrastim biosimilar of Amgen’s Neupogen® on Jan. 7, 2015, brings into sharp focus the provisions of the Biologics Price Competition and Innovation Act of 2009 (“BPCIA”) for resolving patent issues. The imminent approval by the FDA of Sandoz’ application now leaves resolution of patent issues for Sandoz to contend with as it prepares to launch its biosimilar filgrastim product. The lawsuit to resolve these issues, however, has just begun.

The Patent Trial and Appeal Board (PTAB) issued its first final written decisions June 20, 2014, in four inter partes reviews (IPR) of pharmaceutical-related patents. The four decisions effectively invalidated all 58 of the challenged patent claims spread across four patents owned by Merck & Cie and South Alabama Medical Science Foundation (SAMSF) who previously accused Husch Blackwell client Gnosis SpA of infringement.

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.

When inter partes review actions first became available in 2012, no generic pharma companies availed themselves to this litigation tool. Not until 2013 did a generic pharma company first seek inter partes review (“IPR”) of a brand drug patent in Apotex Inc. v. Alcon Pharmaceuticals, Ltd., IPR2013-00012 and -00015. In response to Apotex’s petition for inter partes review, the Patent Trial and Appeal Board (“PTAB”) ruled there was a reasonable likelihood that the two challenged patents were invalid for obviousness. Interestingly, a U.S. District Court previously determined that one of the patents was not invalid based upon the same prior art references.  Id. at Paper 43; March 19, 2013.

Law360 recently quoted Husch Blackwell attorney Don Mizerk in an article about the FDA’s new request for comments.  In the announcement, the FDA established a public docket to receive suggestions for ways to improve the quality of abbreviated new drug applications (ANDAs) and for the FDA to learn about difficulties sponsors are having with…

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.

The Development and Marketing of Neurontin

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. 

On June 14ththe Governor signed into law SB 1803. It amends Chapter 531 by limiting the Texas Health and Human Services Office of Inspector General’s (HHSC-OIG) ability to implement payment holds, improving providers’ rights to expedited appeals before the State Office of Administrative Hearings, redefining the liability for hearing costs, creating new requirements…

New Hampshire law applies a hybrid design-defect standard that imposes liability for harm caused by a drug product if the drug product, in light of the manufacturer’s warning on the label, is unreasonably dangerous. Does such a framework avoid federal preemption issues that have doomed failure to warn negligence claims premised on taking allegedly dangerous generic pharmaceuticals? That was the question addressed by the Supreme Court at oral argument in Mutual Pharmaceutical Co. v. Bartlett, the third in a trilogy of cases addressing preemption of state tort claims against drug manufacturers based on federal laws mandating prescription drug labeling requirements. While several justices appeared uncomfortable with the possibility of creating a system that allowed for FDA approval to serve as both a ceiling and a floor for generic drug liability, overall it appeared that the Court would find preemption, consistent with the defendant and Solicitor General’s arguments.

Three years ago in Wyeth v. Levine, the Court held that a state law failure-to-warn claim related to a branded pharmaceutical was not preempted federal drug laws. The next year in a 5-4 decision, the Court held in PLIVA, Inc. v. Mensing that a negligence claim for failure to warn by a generic manufacturer was preempted by federal law because the Hatch-Waxman Act (which sets up the generic pharma framework) allowed for no discretion in what a generic pharmaceutical manufacturer can put on its label.

Mutual comes to the Supreme Court after the First Circuit upheld a New Hampshire Federal District Court’s jury verdict premised on the finding that a generic version of sulindac was unreasonably dangerous. The arguments before the Court centered on whether a design defect claim was somehow different from a failure to warn claim, and therefore merited a different result than the one reached in PLIVA.