Pfizer Cements Win Axing Hemophilia Patents at Federal Circuit

Pfizer Inc. convinced a federal appeals court to uphold an administrative tribunal’s decisions invalidating a rival’s patents covering a therapy for treating a rare genetic bleeding disorder.

The Patent Trial and Appeal Board was correct to find uniQure Biopharma BV’s U.S. Patent No. 9,982,248 obvious and 10,465,180 anticipated, according to a Thursday opinion from the US Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit. The patents cover a gene therapy involving nucleic acids that encode for a variant of a human protein called factor IX to treat hemophilia B or Christmas disease.

In particular, the tribunal was correct in finding that ...