Bartlit Beck Wins Inter Partes Review (IPR) Trial for Gilead Sciences, Inc.
On Friday, May 21, Bartlit Beck won an inter partes review trial at the United States Patent and Trademark Office for our client Gilead Sciences, Inc. The victory invalidates all claims of U.S. Patent No. 8,815,830 asserted by the Regents of the University of Minnesota against Gilead’s sofosbuvir-containing Hepatitis-C treatments, some of the most groundbreaking advances in medicine in the past half-century that took Gilead years and billions of dollars to develop. The case involved a number of issues of first impression, including patent venue in the wake of the Supreme Court’s TC Heartland opinion, the application of sovereign immunity to States acting as parties before the patent office, and the written description necessary to substantiate claims to large genera of chemical compounds. Friday’s decision, effectively ends the case before the close of fact discovery in the district court. J. Scott McBride, Nevin Gewertz, Faye Paul Teller, Rebecca Horwitz, and Meg Fasulo were the team members. Read the opinion here.
Coverage in Law360 here