Valeant Pharmaceuticals Intl. v. Mylan Pharmaceuticals Inc.

955 F.3d 25
Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit·Decided April 8, 2020·No. 18-2097·Published·Cited by 12 cases

Opinion

United States Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit

VALEANT PHARMACEUTICALS INTERNATIONAL, INC., SALIX PHARMACEUTICALS, INC., PROGENICS PHARMACEUTICALS, INC., WYETH LLC, FKA WYETH,

Plaintiffs-Appellees

v.

MYLAN PHARMACEUTICALS INC., MYLAN INC., MYLAN LABORATORIES LIMITED, Defendants-Appellants

ACTAVIS LLC,

Defendant

2018-2097

Appeal from the United States District Court for the District of New Jersey in Nos. 2:15-cv-08180-SRC-CLW, 2:15-cv-08353-SRC-CLW, 2:16-cv-00035-SRC-CLW, 2:16- cv-00889-SRC-CLW, 2:17-cv-06714-SRC-CLW, Judge Stanley R. Chesler.

Decided: April 8, 2020

2 VALEANT PHARMACEUTICALS INTL. v. MYLAN PHARMACEUTICALS INC.

BRYAN DINER, Finnegan, Henderson, Farabow, Garrett & Dunner, LLP, Washington, DC, argued for all plaintiffs- appellees. Plaintiffs-appellees Valeant Pharmaceuticals International, Inc., Salix Pharmaceuticals, Inc., Progenics Pharmaceuticals, Inc. also represented by JUSTIN JAMES HASFORD, CORA RENAE HOLT, ESTHER LIM; JESSICA C. LEBEIS, Boston, MA; CHARLES E. LIPSEY, Reston, VA.

CHARLES H. CHEVALIER, Gibbons P.C., Newark, NJ, for plaintiff-appellee Wyeth LLC. Also represented by JONATHON BRUGH LOWER.

ROBERT FLORENCE, Parker Poe Adams & Bernstein LLP, Atlanta, GA, argued for defendants-appellants. Also represented by MICHEAL L. BINNS, KAREN L. CARROLL.

Before LOURIE, REYNA, and HUGHES, Circuit Judges.

LOURIE, Circuit Judge.

Mylan Pharmaceuticals Inc., Mylan Inc., and Mylan Laboratories Ltd. (collectively, “Mylan”) appeal from the U.S. District Court for the District of New Jersey’s grant of summary judgment that claim 8 of U.S. Patent 8,552,025 (“the ’025 patent”) is not invalid. Valeant Pharm. Int’l, Inc. v. Mylan Pharm., Inc., No. 2:15-cv-08180 (SRC), 2018 WL 2023537 (D.N.J. May 1, 2018) (“Decision”). For the reasons detailed below, we reverse and remand.

BACKGROUND

Valeant owns the ’025 patent, which claims stable methylnaltrexone pharmaceutical preparations. According to the ’025 patent specification, methylnaltrexone, a quaternary amine opioid antagonist derivative, can be useful for reducing the side effects of opioids but is unstable in aqueous solution. The inventors discovered, however, that when the pH of a methylnaltrexone solution is adjusted,

VALEANT PHARMACEUTICALS INTL. v. MYLAN 3 PHARMACEUTICALS INC.

optimally to between 3.0 and 3.5, the percentage of total degradants drops significantly. ’025 patent col. 2 l. 39.

The inventors’ preferred manufacturing process for their formulation, as described in Example 2, includes several ingredients acting in concert. Example 2 includes methylnaltrexone , sodium edetate as a chelating agent, sodium citrate and citric acid as buffering agents, and sodium chloride as an isotonicity agent. Each ingredient in the formulation plays its own role. For example, the buffer stabilizes the formulation’s pH, which can drop during an autoclaving step, and adding isotonicity agents matches the formulation to the osmotic potential of human extracellular fluids. Chelating agents reduce methylnaltrexone degradation on their own, and the addition of disodium edetate in particular yields an additional, synergistic effect in concert with pH manipulation. The specification thus explains that “manipulating other parameters in concert with pH resulted in stable formulations of methylnaltrexone anywhere in a range from a pH of 2.0 to 6.0.” ’025 patent col 8. ll. 62–66.

Relevant here are claim 1 and claim 8 of the ’025 patent . Claim 8 depends from claim 1, which recites:

A stable pharmaceutical preparation comprising a solution of methylnaltrexone or a salt thereof, wherein the preparation comprises a pH between about 3.0 and about 4.0.

’025 patent col. 19 ll. 25–27. Claim 8 recites “[t]he pharmaceutical preparation of claim 1, wherein the preparation is stable to storage for 24 months at about room temperature .” Id. col. 19 ll. 44–46. Notably, claim 8 recites the same preparation as claim 1, but with a newly stated result : 24-month stability. Given that there are no limitations indicating any difference between the preparation of claim 1 and claim 8, it is unclear what, if anything, accounts for the added stability limitation. Apparently only the nature of methylnaltrexone and the pH matter. And 4 VALEANT PHARMACEUTICALS INTL. v. MYLAN PHARMACEUTICALS INC.

there are no limitations in the claim to bring about the stated stability.

The ’025 patent is listed in the Orange Book for Relistor ®, an injectable drug used to treat constipation as a side effect of taking opioid medication. Mylan filed an Abbreviated New Drug Application (“ANDA”) seeking approval from the U.S. Food and Drug Administration to market a generic version of Relistor®, and Valeant responded by bringing suit against Mylan in the District of New Jersey, alleging that Mylan’s proposed product would infringe the ’025 patent. As relevant here, Mylan ultimately conceded that its ANDA product would infringe claim 8 of the ’025 patent but maintained that claim 8 was invalid as obvious over solutions of similar anti-opioids.

The parties stipulated to the construction of claim 8’s stability limitation, and the district court did not hold a claim construction hearing. Specifically, the court entered the parties’ stipulation that the phrase “the preparation is stable to storage for 24 months at about room temperature” means “the methylnaltrexone degradation products in the preparation do not exceed 2.0% of the total methylnaltrexone present in the preparation and the preparation is suitable for pharmaceutical use when stored for 24 months at room temperature.” Stipulation and Order, Valeant Pharm., Int’l v. Mylan Pharm. Inc., 2:15-cv-08180-SRC- CLW (May 30, 2017), ECF No. 148; J.A. 651.

Before the district court, Valeant moved for summary judgment that claim 8 would not have been obvious, and the district court granted Valeant’s motion. The court rejected Mylan’s expert testimony and cited references as insufficient , largely because the references did not teach methylnaltrexone formulations but instead formulations of similar but different compounds, naloxone and naltrexone. Decision, 2018 WL 2023537, at *8. The court also rejected Mylan’s theory that the claimed pH range would have been obvious to try. Ultimately, the court held that there was

VALEANT PHARMACEUTICALS INTL. v. MYLAN 5 PHARMACEUTICALS INC.

nothing in the record suggesting that a pH of 3–4, “without added stabilizers,” was associated with 24-month stability for injectable pharmaceutical solutions. Id. at *10.

Mylan appealed, and we have jurisdiction under 28 U.S.C. § 1295(a)(1).

DISCUSSION

We review a grant of summary judgment under the law of the regional circuit, which in this case is the Third Circuit . See Charles Mach. Works, Inc. v. Vermeer Mfg. Co., 723 F.3d 1376, 1378 (Fed. Cir. 2013) (citing Grober v. Mako Prods., Inc., 686 F.3d 1335, 1344 (Fed. Cir. 2012)). We exercise plenary review over the district court’s grant of summary judgment, Capps v. Mondelez Glob., LLC, 847 F.3d 144, 151 (3d Cir. 2017) (citing Seamans v. Temple Univ., 744 F.3d 853, 859 (3d Cir. 2014)), reviewing it de novo, Heraeus Med. GmbH v. Esschem, Inc., 927 F.3d 727, 733 (3d Cir. 2019) (citing Faush v. Tuesday Morning, Inc., 808 F.3d 208, 215 (3d Cir. 2015)).

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Valeant Pharmaceuticals Intl. v. Mylan Pharmaceuticals Inc., 955 F.3d 25 (Fed. Cir. 2020).

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