Citations
- 456 F. Supp. 2d 644
Full opinion text
OPINION
LIFLAND, District Judge.
I. Introduction
Plaintiffs, Janssen Pharmaceutica, N.V., a Belgian corporation, and its New Jersey-based subsidiary, Janssen Pharmaceutica, L.P. (collectively “Janssen”), are the inventors and producers of risperidone, the active ingredient in Janssen’s successful drug for the treatment of schizophrenia, Risperdal. It is perhaps an understatement to describe Risperdal as merely “successful.” The drug has been described by the American Chemical Society as “a standard in the treatment of psychosis, revolutionizing anti-psychotic treatments.” Pl.’s Ex. (“PX”) 309. In 2005 alone, Risperdal accounted for over $3 billion in worldwide sales for Janssen’s parent company, Johnson & Johnson. Vergis Tr. 78:9-16.
Defendants, Mylan Pharmaceuticals, Inc. (“Mylan”), a West Virginia corporation, Dr. Reddy's Laboratories, Ltd., an Indian corporation, and its New Jersey-based subsidiary, Dr. Reddy’s Laboratories, Inc. (collectively, “DRL”), are drug manufacturers seeking to market a generic version of risperidone. Janssen filed this suit claiming infringement of its U.S. Patent No. 4,804,663 (“the '663 patent”), which claims risperidone, among other chemical compounds. Mylan and DRL concede they have infringed the '663 patent; they counter, however, that the '663 patent is invalid due to obviousness, and alternatively, Mylan argues that the '663 patent is unenforceable due to Janssen’s alleged inequitable conduct.
The parties tried the case before the Court from June 28, 2006 through June 30, 2006 and on July 5, 2006. Thereafter, they submitted proposed findings of fact and conclusions of law. The parties’ submissions and the record evidence have been carefully considered. For the reasons set forth below, the Court finds that Mylan and DRL have failed to prove by clear and convincing evidence that the '663 patent is obvious under 35 U.S.C. § 103(a), and that Mylan has failed to prove by clear and convincing evidence that Janssen engaged in inequitable conduct. Thus, the '663 patent is neither invalid nor unenforceable, and as a result, Mylan and DRL have infringed that patent under 35 U.S.C. § 271(e)(2).
II. Background
A. The '663 Patent
On February 14, 1989, the United States Patent and Trademark Office (“PTO”) issued the '663 patent to its inventors Ludo E.J. Kennis and Jan Vandenberk and as-signee, Janssen. PX 1. The '663 patent originated from a patent application filed with the PTO on March 27, 1985. Stipulations of Fact (“SF”) 14-15; PX 1.
The '663 patent’s 18 claims encompass compounds “having useful antipsychotic properties and being useful in the treatment of a variety of complaints in which serotonin release is of predominant importance.” PX 1. Among those compounds are risperidone and compound 11, which are included in each of the patent’s 18 claims. SF-17. There is no claim in the '663 patent in which risperidone is the only compound. PX 1; Wolff Tr. 546:1-10.
The compounds claimed in the '663 patent were the result of Janssen’s efforts to invent an effective antipsychotic drug, with few side effects, for the treatment of Schizophrenia. Tamminga Tr. 53:4-22.
B. Schizophrenia
Schizophrenia is a debilitating disease of the brain characterized by hallucinations, delusions and other symptoms that impair a person’s capacity for thought, attention, memory, emotion and social functioning. Tamminga Tr. 46:19-47:1. Despite much research, the cause, mechanism, and etiology of the disease remain unknown. Tam-minga Tr. 47:2-3.
People who suffer from schizophrenia exhibit a wide array of symptoms that can be classified into three major categories: positive symptoms, negative symptoms, and cognitive symptoms. Tamminga Tr. 47:4-7.
Positive symptoms include extreme hallucinations and paranoid delusions. Hallucinations are auditory, visual or both. Schizophrenics do not just hear voices in their mind, “they believe that there are people actually talking to them.” Tam-minga Tr. 47:8-16. In addition, schizophrenics believe in the false realities created by their delusions, sometimes causing the delusions to take over their lives. Id. at 47:17-18.
Negative symptoms include the complete loss of all emotion and lack of spontaneous thought, both of which “result in a loss of social skills and really an entire loss of social functioning.” Tamminga Tr. 47:19-24.
Cognitive symptoms include the impairment of memory and attention. These cognitive deficits cause schizophrenics to become unable to use information and to have great difficulty making decisions. Tamminga Tr. 47:25-48:4.
These symptoms can entirely take over the lives of persons with schizophrenia, preventing them from working or developing social networks. Less than 20 percent of schizophrenics have jobs, less than 15 percent ever marry, and approximately 10 percent eventually commit suicide. Tam-minga Tr. 48:5-15.
C. Early Treatments
Schizophrenia is a disease as old as mankind. For most of that time, there were no effective medical treatments. The only option was compassionate care, placing schizophrenics into protected environments such as government hospitals that quickly became overcrowded. But compassionate care did nothing to treat the symptoms and the patients did not get better. Tamminga Tr. 48:18-49:2.
Beginning in the 1930s, doctors attempted medical treatments. These treatments included induced fever, electroconvulsive shock therapy and frontal lobotomy. None of these attempts to treat the disease was effective. To the contrary, these treatments could even worsen the symptoms of schizophrenia. Tamminga Tr. 49:3-12.
D. First Generation, “Typical” Anti-psychotic Drugs
The lack of effective treatment options continued into the 1950s. Then, for the first time, doctors developed an antipsy-chotic drug to treat schizophrenia, called chlorpromazine. Tamminga Tr. 49:13-18. The discovery that chlorpromazine could treat some symptoms of schizophrenia was accidental. Physicians were testing chlor-promazine as a sedative when they noticed that chlorpromazine significantly reduced the hallucinations and delusions of their schizophrenic patients. Tamminga Tr. 49:19-25.
As the first pharmaceutical treatment for schizophrenia, chlorpromazine was rapidly adopted for use throughout the medical community. Pharmaceutical companies quickly began searching for similar drugs. This led to the development of new antipsychotics such as Janssen’s haloperi-dol, marketed under the trade name, Hal-dol. Chlorpromazine, haloperidol, and other similar drugs became known as first generation, or typical, antipsychotics. Tamminga Tr. 50:12-16, 21-25.
While chlorpromazine and the other typical antipsychotics were an improvement over compassionate care and the early ineffective treatments, they were not perfect. A typical antipsychotic improved the positive symptoms of schizophrenia, but it had no effect on the negative or cognitive symptoms that severely impaired the emotions, thoughts, and social functioning of schizophrenics. In fact, in some cases a typical antipsychotic could even worsen these symptoms. Tamminga Tr. 50:1-3.
More significantly, even when typical antipsychotics were successful at treating the positive symptoms of schizophrenia, they had many unwanted and serious side effects, including sedation, cardiac side effects, and motor side effects. The motor-related side effects were the largest drawback. Tamminga Tr. 51:1-5.
For example, typical antipsychotics caused extrapyramidal symptoms (“EPS”) that caused patients to experience rigidity and tremors similar to those of Parkinson’s disease. The rigidity and tremors brought on by EPS were always uncomfortable and often painful. EPS symptoms tended to cease when a patient stopped taking the medication. Tamminga Tr. 51:6-52:2.
Even worse, EPS symptoms could also gradually develop into a more serious motor syndrome called “tardive dyskinesia” (“TD”), characterized by motor difficulties such as, repetitive, involuntary, and purposeless movements. Unlike EPS, tardive dyskinesia was frequently irreversible even after the medication was discontinued. Tamminga Tr. 51:13-23.
These side effects had significant repercussions in the treatment of schizophrenia. Not surprisingly, patients disliked these motor side effects so much that they sometimes stopped taking their medication altogether. Tamminga Tr. 52:3-5.
E.Second Generation, “Atypical” Antipsychotic Drugs
In the 1960s, scientists’ search for an improved antipsychotic resulted in the development of the first second generation or “atypical” antipsychotic, clozapine. Cloza-pine was introduced in the 1960s in Europe. Unlike the typical antipsychotics, clozapine had reduced motor side effects. Tamminga Tr. 52:6-9, 52:25-53:1.
Soon after clozapine was introduced, however, researchers discovered that while it had reduced motor side effects, it had a significant toxicity issue. It was found that clozapine could cause agranulocytosis, a sometimes deadly blood disorder. Due to its toxicity, the Food and Drug Administration (“FDA”) did not approve clozapine in the United States until 1990. And even then, it was not approved for general use; its approval was limited to use only with treatment-resistant patients. Tamminga Tr. 52:10-24.
Despite this drawback, the discovery of clozapine demonstrated that it was possible to treat the positive symptoms of schizophrenia without serious motor side effects. It gave the medical community renewed hope for developing improved an-tipsychotic drugs. Tamminga Tr. 53:2-8. For that reason, clozapine became the focus of researchers looking for new drugs that would incorporate clozapine’s improvements without its toxicity. Strup-czewski Dep. (11/16/2004) Tr. 82:4-12. For example, both Eli Lilly and Sandoz spent years on research programs to modify clozapine to create a drug that would retain clozapine’s benefits and eliminate its toxic effect. Meltzer Tr. 250:3-17; Tam-minga Tr. 53:2-8.
F. Risperidone
Janssen was one of the companies attempting to develop a safe atypical anti-psychotic. Following years of research and the testing of many potential compounds, two Janssen scientists, Kennis and Vandenberk, discovered risperidone. When approved by the FDA, risperidone became the first atypical antipsychotic available for general use that effectively treated symptoms with reduced side effects. Risperidone, sold by Janssen under the trademark Risperdal, was approved by the FDA in late 1993 and was first sold in the United States in 1994. Tamminga Tr. 53:9-13; Vergis Tr. 76:6-7, 13-15, 76:24-77:5.
Risperidone was a major advance over the typical antipsychotic drugs. Tam-minga Tr. 55:19-56:5. Like the typical antipsychotics, risperidone has a potent effect in treating the positive symptoms of schizophrenia. However, unlike the typical antipsychotics, risperidone also improves the negative and cognitive symptoms of schizophrenia. Moreover, risperidone also has an extremely low side effect profile, with reduced EPS and almost no TD. Tamminga Tr. 53:14-22, 55:19-56:5.
Risperdal had a revolutionary impact on the treatment of schizophrenia. Once ris-peridone entered the market, the medical community “set aside” the typical antipsy-chotics. Tamminga Tr. 55:19-25.
G. Mylan & DRL’s Abbreviated New Drug Applications
Following Janssen’s success with Ris-perdal, generic manufacturers began filing Abbreviated New Drug Applications (“ANDA”) with the FDA under the Hatch-Waxman Act, 28 U.S.C. § 355(j)(l), seeking approval to sell generic risperidone products. Most of those companies chose not to challenge Janssen’s '663 patent and included a “paragraph III” certification under 28 U.S.C. § 355(j)(2)(A)(vii)(III), indicating that the FDA should not approve their applications until after the expiration of the '663 patent. Vergis Tr. 82:9-13; PX 75, PX 76, PX 77, PX 78, PX 85; PX 396.
On November 29, 2001, Mylan submitted an ANDA (No. 76-288) to the FDA seeking approval to market a generic risperi-done tablet in various doses. Initially, Mylan also chose not to challenge the '663 patent by including a paragraph III certification with its ANDA. SF 21.
On October 24, 2003, DRL submitted an ANDA (No. 76-879) to the FDA also seeking to sell a generic version of risperidone. SF-27. DRL’s ANDA, however, contained a “paragraph IV” certification pursuant to 28 U.S.C. § 355