Bayer Pharma AG, et al. v. Watson Laboratories Inc., et al., C.A. No. 12-517 - GMS, May 2, 2016.

Sleet, J. Post-trial opinion holding that the asserted claims in two patents-in-suit are not invalid due to obviousness.

A 6-day bench trial was held from April 6-14, 2015.  After trial, the court entered stipulations and orders regarding infringement of certain claims of the ‘178 and ‘206 patents. The court rejected defendant’s claim that the patents-in-suit were obvious and further rejected defendant’s indefiniteness defense. After post-trial briefing, plaintiff contends that a POSA would not have selected sildenafil as a lead compound as a starting point in designing a new PDE5 inhibitor. The court agrees, and finds that defendant’s expert is impacted by hindsight bias. The court also agrees with plaintiff that modifying sildenafil was not a matter of trying a finite number of identified, predictable solutions.  The court further finds that the secondary objective indicia point to a finding of non-obviousness.