AbbVie Loses Appeal to Keep Documents in AndroGel Suit Secret

AbbVie Inc.‘s assertion that documents, created during a patent dispute involving the low testosterone drug AndroGel 1% were protected by attorney-client privilege, was rejected by the Third Circuit Monday.

AbbVie and Besins Healthcare Inc., which acquired the now-expired patent for AndroGel from Abbott Laboratories, sought a writ of mandamus after the district court ruled that a number of the documents weren’t protected under the fraud-crime exception to attorney-client privilege—under which communications between an attorney and client in furtherance of future illegal conduct isn’t privileged.

But Judge D. Brooks Smith of the US Court of Appeals for the Third ...