Supreme Court Won’t Review Apotex Patent Complaint

The U.S. Supreme Court refused to hear Apotex’s complaint that UCB’s hypertension drug Univasc infringed on one of its patents.

The notice brings to an end Apotex’s April 2012 lawsuit seeking to force UCB to stop marketing Univasc (moexipril). A trial judge ruled that the Canadian generics maker’s ’556 patent was unenforceable due to misrepresentation. Specifically, the judge ruled that Apotex CEO Bernard Sherman deceived the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office into thinking he discovered a key ingredient called moexipril magnesium when that ingredient was already used in Univasc, a drug that won FDA approval in 1995, well before Sherman’s patent in 2000.

A panel of the U.S. Court of Appeal for the Federal Circuit upheld the lower court’s ruling in August 2014, noting that the decision was based on a willful misrepresentation of the facts regarding Univasc’s manufacturing process.

The full appeals court refused to rehear Apotex’s appeal in December, leading to the Supreme Court notification last week. — John Bechtel