Notch a win for Johnson & Johnson in its royalty fight with Genmab over the blockbuster multiple myeloma drug Darzalex.
An arbitration tribunal sided with the pharma major Thursday on two issues related to the partners’ license agreement on the superstar med, which also goes by the name daratumumab.
The dispute kicked off in September 2020 after Johnson & Johnson scaled back its royalty payments to Genmab—a move the Danish drugmaker vowed to fight.
Genmab can appeal the latest decision and said in a release Friday that it’s “currently considering its options.” The company noted that its collaborations with J&J’s Janssen unit, including the partnership on Darzalex, would continue.
There are two issues at play in the royalty dispute. The first has to do with whether J&J will continue to pay royalties once Genmab’s Darzalex patents run out in the late 2020s and early 2030s. By majority opinion, the tribunal determined that J&J must pay royalties through the end of Genmab’s last-held patent, but not the relevant J&J-owned patent, marking a win for the U.S. pharma giant.
The other impasse is related to the royalty split between J&J, Genmab and Halozyme for the subcutaneous drug delivery tech developed by Halozyme, which is used in Darzalex’s Faspro formulation. Around the middle of 2020, J&J dialed back its Darzalex royalty payments to Genmab, saying its partner should help chip in toward Halozyme payments.
The tribunal on Thursday agreed that J&J can continue to reduce its royalty payments to Genmab to offset part of what it owes Halozyme.
To date, the J&J squeeze on Genmab’s royalty payments has cost the company around 501 million Danish kroner (about $73.16 million), Genmab said in its latest annual report.
Darzalex, for its part, posted a little over $6 billion in worldwide sales last year, Johnson & Johnson said in its 2021 earnings report published in January.