PTAB Upholds Five Pfizer, UCB Patents for Toviaz

The PTO’s Patent Trial and Appeal Board rejected five Mylan challenges to patents held by UCB Pharma and Pfizer covering the overactive bladder treatment Toviaz.

The PTAB said Mylan failed to demonstrate that UCB’s patents, granted in a worldwide license to Pfizer, were unpatentable. The five patents covered the compound of Toviaz (fesoterodine), its manufacturing processes and derivatives, as well as its use as a treatment for urinary incontinence.

Mylan had argued that a combination of research papers and label information from another Pfizer overactive bladder treatment, Detrol (tolterodine), would have led an ordinary trained professional to develop Toviaz as a treatment — specifically by designing a prodrug delivery system that would activate the main ingredient once it was metabolized within the patient’s liver.