Boehringer Sues to Protect Billion-Dollar Diabetes Drugs

Boehringer Ingelheim Pharmaceuticals Inc. is aggressively moving to protect its franchises on three profitable diabetes drugs.

Aurobindo Pharma Ltd.'s bid to make generic copies of the drugs—Jardiance (empagliflozin), Glyxambi (empagliflozin/linagliptin), and Synjardi (empagliflozin/metformin)—would infringe three patents covering the products, its complaint filed in federal court in Delaware said.

It’s easy to see why Boehringer is eager to protect its franchise of empagliflozin products: in 2017, its flagship empagliflozin product Jardiance generated more than $1 billion in sales, the company said.

The patents at issue are U.S. Patent Nos. 8,551,957, 7,713,938 and/or 9,949,998. The last of those patents ...