It’s the end of the road for one of Teva’s patent lawsuits against migraine competitor Eli Lilly.
After filing the case in 2021, a patent trial and appeal board has since found two of Teva’s Ajovy patents invalid based on earlier publications that already disclosed the methods for treating migraines with antibodies. With that, the companies agreed to dismiss the patent case, according to the dismissal filing in Massachusetts federal court.
In addition, Teva agreed not to sue Lilly again over the specific patents, which were filed in 2016 and 2017, according to the filing. The companies did not immediately reply to Fierce Pharma’s request for comment.
While those patents now appear off the table, the two migraine drugmakers still have other irons in the fire.
In 2018, Teva brought allegations that Lilly's Emgality stepped on 9 of its patents. In 2022, a Boston federal jury handed Teva a $176 million verdict for Lilly’s proposed willful infringement on three Ajovy patents.
But this September, the tides turned when a Massachusetts federal judge overturned the ruling.
Judge Allison Burroughs ultimately agreed with Lilly’s argument that Emgality’s antibody differed from Ajovy’s and that Teva overstepped when trying to patent an entire class of drugs.
“Even viewing the evidence in the light most favorable to the verdict, asserted claims are broad,” Burroughs wrote in her ruling.
Teva has since filed a notice of appeal relating to that judgment, Bloomberg Law reported.
The two drugs were approved 13 days apart in September of 2018 and feature a similar mechanism of action, inhibiting the calcitonin gene-related peptides (CGRPs) that cause migraine headaches. Over this year’s third quarter, Lilly’s Emgality pulled in $126.5 million in U.S. revenue while Ajovy earned a $61 million North American haul.