Vectura wins additional $10m patent damages against GSK

A district court has upped Vectura’s award of $89.7 million in damages by $10m, after a jury trial earlier this year found that GlaxoSmithKline (GSK) has willfully infringed one of its patents.

In a press release on Friday, September 13, Vectura announced that the US District Court for the District of Delaware had granted its motion for a 3% royalty rate on all future US sales of the infringing products until Vectura’s patent expires in 2021.

It was also granted royalties on previous sales of the products from January 1, 2019 to May 16, 2019.

The dispute concerns one of Vectura’s patents (US number 8,303,991), which GSK was found to have infringed with three of its “Ellipta” dry powder inhaler products.

In May, LSIPR reported that a jury had awarded Vectura 89.7m in damages for the period from August 2016 to December 2018.

In its complaint, Vectura had said that GSK’s products contained the pharmaceutical composition claimed by the ‘991 patent.

The three drugs in question are powders to be used with the Ellipta inhaler.

The patent covering the drugs was not included in a US licence agreement between the two companies, Vectura said.

“Vectura and GSK had entered into an agreement in 2010 under which GSK had taken a licence to formulation technology covered by a Vectura patent family.

“These licensed patents expired in July 2016. At this time GSK had the option to license additional patent families under the original agreement but declined to do so, resulting in the filing of the lawsuit by Vectura,” Vectura said in a press release.

Paul Fry, Vectura’s chief financial officer, said the post-judgment motions “further validate Vectura’s original decision to pursue this action with GSK”.

“We will always take action to protect and defend our intellectual property and we will provide further updates on this matter in due course,” Fry said.

The court also denied GSK’s motion for a new trial, and judgment of non-infringement.

Source：www.lifesciencesipreview.com

Editor：Vapor