The Federal Circuit Court has rejected Glaxo Smith Kline’s (NYSE:GSK) petition for a new trial in a patent case brought by British inhaler company Vectura.
The circuit court upheld a May 2019 jury verdict in U.S. District Court for the District of Delaware, awarding Ventura $89.7 million damages for the period from August 2016 through December 2018 for an infringement on Vectura’s U.S. patent 8303991 by sales of three of GSK’s Ellipta inhalers. The jury found that Vectura had proven that GlaxoSmithKline had infringed claim 3 of patent ‘991.
In September 2019, a federal judge in Delaware awarded Vectura:
- An additional $10.5 million in compensatory damages.
- Ongoing royalties of 3% on U.S. sales of certain infringing GSK Ellipta products.
- Supplemental damages based on GSK’s infringing sales of approximately $10.5 million.
- Pre-judgment interest at the prime rate of approximately $6.7 million.
GSK has 30 days to file a petition for rehearing. “We are disappointed with the ruling and are weighing our options,” a company spokesperson said in an email to Drug Delivery Business News.
Vectura filed the patent infringement lawsuit against GlaxoSmithKline in July 2016. The two companies entered an agreement in 2010 that stated that GlaxoSmithKline would take a license to make technology that was covered by Vectura’s patent family. The licensed patents expired in July 2016, at which point GlaxoSmithKline could license additional patent families under the original agreement. They declined the relicensing, resulting in Vectura’s lawsuit.
This article has been updated with a comment from GlaxoSmithKline.
