Humira Rivals Are Here. So Is a New Wave of Biosimilar Cases (1)

Humira, the world’s best-selling drug, this year faces its first biosimilar rivals in the US, an inevitability that AbbVie Inc. delayed for more than six years by using a wall of ancillary patents and aggressive litigation tactics after the anti-inflammatory’s main patent here expired.

AbbVie is just one of several makers of biologic drugs waging courtroom battles to protect treatments that can account for huge portions of their annual revenue. The second wave of the sort of litigation that delayed the launches of lower-cost Humira alternatives will establish how the next generation of biosimilar treatments will be invented, produced, and ...