First Lawsuit Over Process Patent For Preparing Pharmaceutical Composites

Interesting case study over at China Pharma of a case last year in which Sankyo, a Japanese pharmaceutical company, sued Wansheng pharmaceuticals of Beijing for infringement of a pharmaceutical process patent. It seems that as well as having defences on the basis of non-infringement due to the use being in clinical tests in preparation for bringing the product on the market once Sankyo's patent expired, Wansheng were able to have Sankyo's patent invalidated as it's claims were so broad as to make it a pharmaceutical product patent (now unregisterable in China). This has a major effect on all Chinese pharmaceutical patents, many of which also feature very broad claims. The industry response has not exactly been warm:

Foreign companies hope [that] the Chinese court system [will] establish the following: 1) [that] all process patents for preparation of new drug composites patented before January 1, 1993 are valid and do not contradict with the principles of the Chinese Patent Law 1985, and 2) pilot production of patented drug products for the purpose of drug registration constitutes patent infringements.