AIDS Nonprofit Asks Supreme Court to Hear Case Against Gilead

The AIDS Healthcare Foundation petitioned the U.S. Supreme Court to review a lawsuit that challenges the validity of Gilead’s patents on its widely-used HIV/AIDS drug Tenofovir Alafenamide (TAF).

In January 2016, the nonprofit filed the lawsuit over TAF, a modified version of TDF, which was the basis for most of Gilead’s HIV treatments until December 2017, when the patent expired. AHF alleged Gilead sat on TAF for years to keep generic manufacturers from producing their own versions, and that the patent is invalid “in light of the minor and obvious change” between TDF and TAF.

In July 2016, the Northern District of California granted Gilead’s motion to dismiss the suit and a Federal Circuit Court affirmed that ruling in May 2018. The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit in the District of Columbia said AHF could not demonstrate any connection to the intellectual property that gave it standing for a patent case.