Bayer Healthcare LLC v. Baxalta Inc.

989 F.3d 964
CourtCourt of Appeals for the Federal Circuit
DecidedMarch 1, 2021
Docket19-2418
StatusPublished
Cited by64 cases

This text of 989 F.3d 964 (Bayer Healthcare LLC v. Baxalta Inc.) is published on Counsel Stack Legal Research, covering Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit primary law. Counsel Stack provides free access to over 12 million legal documents including statutes, case law, regulations, and constitutions.

Bluebook
Bayer Healthcare LLC v. Baxalta Inc., 989 F.3d 964 (Fed. Cir. 2021).

Opinion

Case: 19-2418 Document: 67 Page: 1 Filed: 03/01/2021

United States Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit ______________________

BAYER HEALTHCARE LLC, Plaintiff-Cross-Appellant

v.

BAXALTA INC., BAXALTA US INC., Defendants-Appellants

NEKTAR THERAPEUTICS, Defendant-Appellee ______________________

2019-2418, 2020-1017 ______________________

Appeals from the United States District Court for the District of Delaware in No. 1:16-cv-01122-RGA, Judge Richard G. Andrews. ______________________

Decided: March 1, 2021 ______________________

BRADFORD J. BADKE, Sidley Austin LLP, New York, NY, argued for plaintiff-cross-appellant. Also represented by SONA DE, CHING-LEE FUKUDA; JOSHUA JOHN FOUGERE, RYAN C. MORRIS, PAUL ZEGGER, Washington, DC.

EDGAR HAUG, Haug Partners LLP, New York, NY, ar- gued for defendants-appellants and defendant-appellee. Also represented by KAITLIN ABRAMS, NICHOLAS F. GIOVE, JONATHAN HERSTOFF, ERIKA SELLI. Case: 19-2418 Document: 67 Page: 2 Filed: 03/01/2021

______________________

Before NEWMAN, LINN, and STOLL, Circuit Judges. STOLL, Circuit Judge. This patent infringement case presents various issues of claim scope, infringement, validity, and damages. Bayer HealthCare LLC sued Baxalta Inc. and Baxalta US Inc. (collectively, “Baxalta”) and Nektar Therapeutics, alleging that Baxalta’s biologic product Adynovate® infringes cer- tain claims of Bayer’s U.S. Patent No. 9,364,520. The jury found that the asserted claims were enabled and infringed, and that Bayer was entitled to reasonable-royalty dam- ages. The district court did not, however, send the question of willful infringement to the jury, instead holding as a matter of law that Baxalta’s conduct did not meet the re- quirements for willfulness. Baxalta now appeals the dis- trict court’s denial of its motions for judgment as a matter of law or a new trial on the issues of infringement, enable- ment, and damages, along with the court’s award of pre- verdict supplemental damages. Bayer cross-appeals, chal- lenging the district court’s denial of its motion for a new trial on willfulness. We affirm. BACKGROUND I The ’520 patent is directed to recombinant forms of hu- man factor VIII (or FVIII). FVIII is a protein that is pro- duced, and released into the bloodstream, by the liver. FVIII comprises 2,332 amino acids and has six different structural domains: A1-A2-B-A3-C1-C2. Most relevant to this case is the domain of FVIII known as the “B-domain.” As “a critical component of the intrinsic pathway of blood coagulation,” FVIII is useful in the treatment of he- mophilia A. ’520 patent col. 1 ll. 29–30. Hemophilia A is the “most common hereditary coagulation disorder” and is “caused by deficiency or structural defects in” naturally Case: 19-2418 Document: 67 Page: 3 Filed: 03/01/2021

BAYER HEALTHCARE LLC v. BAXALTA INC. 3

occurring FVIII. Id. at col. 1 ll. 27–29. Because FVIII has a “short half-life” of “only about 11 hours,” as a therapeutic it “must be administered frequently.” Id. at col. 1 ll. 52–55. The ’520 patent recognizes that “[t]he need for frequent in- travenous injection creates tremendous barriers to patient compliance” and, thus, “[i]t would be more convenient for the patients if a FVIII product could be developed that had a longer half-life and therefore required less frequent ad- ministration.” Id. at col. 1 ll. 56–60; see id. at col. 2 ll. 47–49. Moreover, “the cost of treatment could be re- duced if the half-life were increased because fewer dosages may then be required.” Id. at col. 1 ll. 60–62. The patent explains that a process called “PEGylation” has “been demonstrated to increase the in vivo half-life of a protein.” Id. at col. 3 ll. 34–35. PEGylation is the conju- gation (or attachment) of a polymer called polyethylene gly- col (PEG) to a protein such as FVIII. See id. at col. 3 ll. 35–37; see also id. at col. 9 ll. 12–14. PEG is a type of polyalkylene oxide. See id. at col. 8 ll. 41–43. The patent further teaches that “random” modification of FVIII by PEGylation was known and that certain ran- domly PEGylated proteins had been approved as therapeu- tics. The inventors sought, however, “a more specific method for PEGylating FVIII” because the prior-art “ran- dom” approach had several drawbacks: Random modification of FVIII by targeting pri- mary amines (N-terminus and lysines) with large polymers such as PEG and dextran has been at- tempted with varying degree[s] of success . . . . This random approach . . . is much more problem- atic for the heterodimeric FVIII. FVIII has hun- dreds of potential PEGylation sites, including the 158 lysines, the two N-termini, and multiple histi- dines, serines, threonines, and tyrosines, all of which could potentially be PEGylated with rea- gents primarily targeting primary amines. Case: 19-2418 Document: 67 Page: 4 Filed: 03/01/2021

Id. at col. 3 l. 50–col. 4 l. 1, col. 4 ll. 19–20. The patent identifies as an “additional drawback to not controlling the site of PEGylation on FVIII” the “potential activity reduction if the PEG were to be attached at or near critical active sites, especially if more than one PEG or a single large PEG is conjugated to FVIII.” Id. at col. 4 ll. 7–11. Furthermore, “[b]ecause random PEGylation will invariably produce large amounts of multiply PEGylated products, purification to obtain only mono-PEGylated products will drastically lower overall yield.” Id. at col. 4 ll. 11–14. Finally, the patent explains that “the enormous heterogeneity in product profile will make consistent syn- thesis and characterization of each lot nearly impossible” and constitutes “a barrier to commercialization,” since “good manufacturing requires a consistent, well-character- ized product.” Id. at col. 4 ll. 14–19; see id. at col. 4 ll. 4–7 (“[H]eterogeneous processing of full length FVIII can lead to a mixture of starting material that leads to further com- plexity in the PEGylated products.”). Thus, the inventors recognized “a need for an improved FVIII variant that possesses greater duration of action in vivo . . . while retaining functional activity,” and that is de- sirably “produced as a homogeneous product in a consistent manner.” Id. at col. 4 l. 65–col. 5 l. 3. The patent purports to overcome the drawbacks of “random” PEGylation by us- ing “site-directed” PEGylation at the B-domain of FVIII: The present invention is based on the discovery that polypeptides having FVIII activity can be co- valently attached at a predefined site to a biocom- patible polymer that is not at an N-terminal amine, and that such polypeptides substantially retain their coagulant activity. Furthermore, these poly- peptide conjugates have improved circulation time and reduced antigenicity. The conjugates of the in- vention are advantageous over the prior art conju- gates that had random polymer attachments to Case: 19-2418 Document: 67 Page: 5 Filed: 03/01/2021

BAYER HEALTHCARE LLC v. BAXALTA INC. 5

FVIII or attachments at an N-terminal. Site-di- rected attachment allows one to design modifica- tions that avoid the regions required for biological activity and thereby to maintain substantial FVIII activity. . . . Site-directed attachment also allows for a uniform product rather than the heterogene- ous conjugates produced in the art by random pol- ymer coupling. Id. at col. 8 ll. 15–30; see id. at col. 15 ll. 9–13 (explaining that the “retained activity” of the claimed conjugates was “surprising” given “the problems with past polymeric con- jugates causing nonspecific addition and reduced activity”). Claim 1 is the only asserted independent claim and re- cites: 1.

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