France - Paris Court of First Instance nullifies Truvada SPC

Moving on to France on the tour of national court rulings on Gilead's SPC on the combination of tenofovir disoproxil and emitricitabine: Gerard Dossmann and Marianne Gabriel, who acted for Biogaran, report below the recent decision of the Paris Court of First Instance to nullify Gilead's SPC FR05C0032.  A copy of the judgement can be found here.

By judgment of May 25th, 2018, the Paris Court of First Instance canceled the SPC on the combination of "tenofovir disoproxil and its salts, hydrates, tautomers and solvates in combination with other therapeutic compounds such as emtricitabine". 

The basic patent mentioned, in its claim 27, a "pharmaceutical composition comprising a compound according to any of claims 1 to 25 [i.e., tenofovir disoproxil], together with a pharmaceutically acceptable carrier, and optionally, other therapeutic ingredients. " 

The Paris Court of First Instance held that "the patent on the basis of which the SPC 0032 was delivered does not mention, in the wording of its claims, emtricitabine, the active ingredient on which the SPC relates in combination with the tenofovir disoproxil, neither makes it necessarily and specifically identifiable, nor does it mention a functional formula implicitly but necessarily and specifically aiming at emtricitabine, so that the product is not protected by the basic patent and that the condition laid down in Article 3 (a) of Regulation (EC) No 469/2009 is not fulfilled ". 

After citing the case-law of the General Court of Justice and the brief of the General Attorney Wathelet, the Court specified the conditions to which a claim must comply in order for a product to be considered protected by the basic patent and therefore meet the requirement of Article 3 (a) of Regulation (EC) No 469/2009. 

Thus, according to the Court, "the requirement for that product to be protected by a basic patent in force "presupposes":

• "that the product is mentioned in the wording of one of the claims or at least, if not mentioned by name, that it is necessarily and specifically identifiable as such by a person skilled in the art"
• “and that where – in the case of a combination of active ingredients – each active ingredient be also mentioned in the claims or, failing that, necessarily and specifically identifiable individually',
• “one must note that if it may considered that - to be considered protected by the basic patent – an  active ingredient is not mentioned in the claims of the basic patent by means of a structural definition but simply by means of a functional definition, it is also important to establish that these claims, interpreted inter alia in light of the invention’s description, as provided by Article 69 of the Convention of 5 October 1973 on the Grant of European Patents (EPC ) and its interpretative protocol, implicitly but necessarily aim in a specific manner at the active principle in question. " 

The Court of First Instance also ruled on the interpretation of Article 69 EPC and held that "the interpretation pursuant to which, for the person skilled in the art, in the context of European Patent No 894, the sentence 'and, where appropriate other therapeutic ingredients' would target an active ingredient with therapeutic properties which may be capable of being combined with tenofovir disoproxil, such as emtricitabine, clearly exceeds what is permitted by Article 69 EPC and its interpretative protocol in this respect, therefore leading to the admission that "the protection also extends to what, in the opinion of a person skilled in the art having examined the description and the drawings, the patent owner intended to protect", and may therefore disregard the reasonable degree of legal certainty that third parties are entitled to expect. " 

The Court noted, for the sake of completeness, that the purpose of Regulation (EC) No 496/2009 had been respected in the present case, since the owner had a 15-year monopoly between February 5th,  2002, date on which the marketing authorization was granted for the drug on the tenofovir disoproxil subject of the patent no. 894 and July 25th, 2017, the patent’s expiry date, so that it did not suffer from any lack of protection within the meaning of recital (9) of the Regulation.

This very recent judgment is not yet final.

Many thanks to Gerard and Marianne!