Reported disputes re: lifesciences licenses
March 23, 2010 3:00 PM Subscribe
Reported commercial disputes between Life Sciences licensors and Big Pharma licensees?
Big Pharma licenses a drug from a biotech. A dispute arises. They go to court. Did their license agreement anticipate the problem? Did it help or hinder? News reports are OK, but if there is a written court decision, especially one that quotes from the agreement between the parties, so much the better. An example would be Eli Lilly v. Emisphere Technologies, in which Lilly was alleged to have used Emisphere confidential information. After MedImmune v. Genentech, which allows a licensee to challenge the validity of a licensed patent, licensors have started changing the way they write their licenses. There may be consquences for challenging the licensed patents. These kinds disputes are hard to search for – you kind of have to know about them. Can anyone out there think of any others?
Big Pharma licenses a drug from a biotech. A dispute arises. They go to court. Did their license agreement anticipate the problem? Did it help or hinder? News reports are OK, but if there is a written court decision, especially one that quotes from the agreement between the parties, so much the better. An example would be Eli Lilly v. Emisphere Technologies, in which Lilly was alleged to have used Emisphere confidential information. After MedImmune v. Genentech, which allows a licensee to challenge the validity of a licensed patent, licensors have started changing the way they write their licenses. There may be consquences for challenging the licensed patents. These kinds disputes are hard to search for – you kind of have to know about them. Can anyone out there think of any others?
Response by poster: Jedicus, thank you! I will have a look at these. I am trying to find ten cases, so if anyone else has any ideas, I would be grateful.
posted by extropy at 5:22 PM on March 23, 2010
posted by extropy at 5:22 PM on March 23, 2010
Ten reported cases fitting this mold? I dunno; I found a few more cases but they were starting to get pretty old. Lexis and WestLaw don't have the best trial court coverage, so one possibility would be to search news archives to find reports of lawsuits and then find the trial documents on PACER. That would be fairly time consuming, though (not to mention potentially expensive).
Is it necessary for them to be life sciences cases? There were quite a few more in other technology areas, as you might imagine.
posted by jedicus at 5:44 PM on March 23, 2010
Is it necessary for them to be life sciences cases? There were quite a few more in other technology areas, as you might imagine.
posted by jedicus at 5:44 PM on March 23, 2010
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Baxter. v. Abbott Labs., 315 F.3d 829 (7th Cir. 2003) involved a fairly complicated licensor-licensee dispute.
Hirsch-Chemie v. Johns Hopkins Univ., 36 U.S.P.Q.2D (BNA) 1395 (4th Cir. 1995) is an unpublished opinion regarding breach of contract between the parties. Basically Hirsch gave JH a bunch of money to do some research in exchange for right of first refusal on a license to any resulting technology.
posted by jedicus at 4:08 PM on March 23, 2010 [1 favorite]