Novartis Gets Mixed News in AbbVie’s Imbruvica Patent Challenge

Patent Trial and Appeal Board invalidated parts of AbbVie patent 9,795,604 for cancer drug Imbruvica following a challenged filed by Novartis’s Sandoz unit.

• Patent covers a way to treat a condition called “graft versus host disease” that patients can develop after receiving a stem cell transplant
• PTAB invalidated claim 1 and related claims 6–10, 24, 35, 39, and 55, which cover the use effective doses of ibrutinib to treat chronic GVHD
• The review board rejected invalidity arguments for claims 4, 13, 15, 28–31, 43–46 and 50–53, which cover which types of patients would be treated, such as when the ...