Merck Sharp & Dohme filed two petitions for inter partes review of Genentech’s U.S. Patent 6,331,415, one of the “Cabilly Patent,” which claims processes and materials broadly applicable to recombinant antibody manufacturing.  Today, the PTAB granted one of those and denied the other.

IPR2017-00047 was filed along with a motion for joinder with Mylan Pharmaceuticals, Inc. v. Genentech, Inc. and City of Hope, IPR2016-00710, an instituted IPR.  The Board instituted IPR2017-00047 and joined it with IPR2016-00710.  Merck Sharpe & Dohme’s stand-alone petition IPR2016-01373 was denied, partly because the prior art relied upon in that petition was already considered by the PTO in a reexamination of the ‘415 patent.

The trial institution documents for these IPRs and selected filings from other IPRs on biologic patents are posted on our IPR tracker page.