The Federal Circuit handed down two related opinions last week, Los Angeles Biomedical Research Institute v. Eli Lilly & Co. and Eli Lilly & Co. v. Los Angeles Biomedical Research Institute, one of which raised the question of whether (and when) it is appropriate for the Court to remand decisions of the Patent Trial and Review Board (PTAB) rendered under the post-grant provisions of the Leahy-Smith America Invents Act (AIA).
The case arose as an inter partes review (IPR) before the Patent Trial and Review Board, wherein the Board held all claims of U.S. Patent No. 8,133,903 to be obvious. The claims were directed to methods for treating ("arresting or regressing") penile fibrosis. This condition has two forms: penile tunical fibrosis, where excess collagen builds up in the tunica albuginea (a membrane surrounding the corpora cavernosa, the chambers that fill with blood during an erection), and corporal tunica fibrosis, where excess collagen builds up in the corpora cavernosa itself. The claimed treatment is daily administration of type 5 phosphodiesterase (PDE5) inhibitors, said treatment being characterized as "long term" in the opinion. The class of PDE5 inhibitors includes drugs like sildenafil (Viagra®) and tadalafil (Cialis®), well-known erectile dysfunction treatments; while penile fibrosis can cause erectile dysfunction, the disease is distinct from other causes of ED.
Claim 1 of the '903 patent is representative:
1. A method comprising:
a) administering acyclicguanosine3',5'-monophosphate (cGMP) type 5 phosphodiesterase (PDE5) inhibitor according to a continuous long-term regimen to an individual with at least one of a penile tunical fibrosis and corporal tissue fibrosis; and
b) arresting or regressing the at least one of the penile tunical fibrosis and corporal tissue fibrosis, wherein the PDE- 5 inhibitor is administered at a dosage up to 1.5 mg/kg/day for not less than 45 days.
Eli Lilly petitioned for an IPR after the Los Angeles Biomedical Research Institute (LAB) sued for infringement over the company's marketing of Cialis® for the treatment of penile fibrosis. The Board instituted an IPR on two grounds: anticipation (reviewed on appeal in a separate decision captioned Eli Lilly & Co. v. Los Angeles Biomedical Research Institute) and obviousness as reviewed in this opinion. The Board found the claims obvious based on teaching that PDE5 inhibitors can be used for treating ED (which the Board construed as including penile tunical fibrosis and corporal tissue fibrosis); that ED is a disease associated with aging and, inter alia, atherosclerosis (associated in turn according to the Board with corporal fibrosis), and that long term treatment (at least 45 days) with up to 1.5 mg/kg/day (~100 mg for an average-sized adult male) was effective for treating ED caused by "diabetes, atherosclerosis, smoking, hypertension, or a combination of such factors." The Board rejected LAB's contention that treatment with PDE5 was thought in the art to exacerbate rather than ameliorate penile fibrosis.
The Federal Circuit vacated and remanded, in an opinion by Judge Bryson joined by Judge Moore: Judge Newman concurred in part but dissented from the judgment. The Court first rejected LAB's claim of priority, based on failure to disclose dosages of up to 1.5 mg/kg/day in its the earliest-filed provisional application. This portion of the opinion considers whether disclosure regarding administration of PDE5 inhibitors to rats at a specific concentration (100 mg/L) would have been understood by a person having ordinary skill in the art to be equivalent to 1.5 mg/kg/day for an adult human male and the Court's opinion that it would not. Indeed, any such "knowledge" by a skilled person would have been based on speculation, which cannot satisfy the written description requirement according to the panel, citing Lockwood v. Am. Airlines, Inc., 107 F.3d 1565, 1572 (Fed. Cir. 1997) .
The panel then addressed the Board's claim construction, finding that the Board had "read out of the claim" the limitation of "an individual with at least one of penile tunical fibrosis and corporal tissue fibrosis" by interpreting that phrase to mean "an individual hav[ing] symptoms that may be associated with penile fibrosis, such as [erectile dysfunction], but not that the patient be specifically diagnosed as having penile tunical fibrosis or corporal tissue fibrosis." According to the opinion, the patent specification makes clear that "penile fibrosis may result in erectile dysfunction, but it may not" and "erectile dysfunction has alternative causes and may present without underlying penile fibrosis." The patent claims are directed to methods for treating penile fibrosis whether or not it results in the symptoms of erectile dysfunction, and thus the Board wrongly construed this term. The panel found support for its view on the correct claim construction of this term from the Court's decision in Rapoport v. Dement, 254 F.3d 1053 (Fed. Cir. 2001), where, analogously, claims for treating sleep apnea were not directed to treating the symptoms of sleep apnea. Accordingly, the Federal Circuit found that the Board had not adopted the broadest reasonable interpretation of the claims but an overbroad interpretation.
Similarly, the opinion rejected the Board's determination that the limitation "arresting or regressing the at least one of the penile tunical fibrosis and corporal tissue fibrosis" is entitled to no patentable weight, as being merely a statement of intended results of PDE5 inhibitor administration according to the claims. The opinion based this conclusion on the placement of the limitation in the structure of the claim, not as part of a preamble but as an affirmatively recited element. In addition, the Court found "[o]ther intrinsic evidence" (and thus appropriately subjected to de novo review) that distinguishes the phrase as it is used in these claims from situations where such limitations are present in preambles or "wherein" clauses; this conclusion is supported by examples of efficacy set forth in the specification.
The Court concluded its review of the Board's claim construction by rejecting LAB's contention that the claim term "continuous long-term regimen" adds an additional limitation regarding steady state plasma concentration or constant dosing level in vivo, because the argument was not supported by the intrinsic evidence from the specification or prosecution history or extrinsic evidence from expert testimony.
Turning to the Board's conclusion that the claims were obvious, the panel vacated the judgment based on its conclusions regarding the Board's improper claim construction. Specifically, while the Board found that it would have been obvious to combine the teachings of three prior art references to arrive at a method for treating ED, "[w]hat the Board did not do [] was to find that those references taught treating a patient with penile tunical fibrosis or corporal tissue fibrosis" nor that the references would have provided the skilled worker with a reasonable expectation of success for treating these conditions. The panel also found wanting reliance on references that taught "on-demand" dosing to support obviousness of claims that recited "long-term daily treatment" with PDE5 inhibitors.
The Board also erred in rejecting LAB's evidence that the prior art taught that long-term treatment with PDE5 inhibitors was thought to be detrimental because it would increase fibrosis by stimulating nitric oxide production as understood in the art.
Accordingly, the panel's ruling was that:
The question remains whether a person of skill in the art would have had a reason to combine [the three cited references] to treat penile fibrosis with a long-term regimen of a daily dosage of a PDE5 inhibitor, and would have had a reasonable expectation of success from doing so. Because the Board's obviousness analysis was based on an erroneous construction of the claim language and an overly broad interpretation of [one of the references], and because the Board did not address the record evidence summarized above, we remand for the Board to make new findings as to whether there was an apparent reason to combine the prior art references and whether that combination would have rendered obvious the long-term administration of PDE5 inhibitors to treat penile fibrosis.
The opinion also mandates that on remand the Board "make the findings necessary to determine whether the references render the 'arresting or regressing' limitation obvious, but affirmed the Board's finding that the dosage limitation ("up to 1.5 mg/kg/day for not less than 45 days") is disclosed in the prior art.
Judge Newman dissented because she believed the Board had established obviousness. In addition, however, in her view remand was inappropriate and contrary to the IPR provisions of the AIA. In her view:
The America Invents Act was enacted to remedy the lack of expedition and to add predictability in infringement disputes, by assigning to an expert administrative tribunal and presumed expert federal court the resolution of some major patentability issues, with tight procedural rules and deadlines. It was expected that in the normal course questions of patentability under Section 102 and 103 would be reliably and speedily resolved. Implementing this policy, when we find analytic lapses by the PTAB, it appears that the statute contemplates that we will make the determination, on the record that was made at the Board. Indeed, the depth of briefing by the parties suggests that this was their understanding, too.
Remands are contrary to this understanding of the intent of Congress in enacting the IPR provisions of the AIA, and thus while Judge Newman does not believe remands are never appropriate, they should be rare.
In the companion case, the Federal Circuit affirmed the Board's determination that the asserted reference (International Publication No. WO 01/80860) did not anticipate the claims, because it did not disclose the limitation that PDE5 inhibitors be administered "at a dosage up to 1.5 mg/kg/day for not less than 45 days." While conceding that the reference might "suggest" long-term dosing, the panel held that such suggestion is not enough to satisfy the anticipation standard, citing AstraZeneca LP v. Apotex, Inc., 633 F.3d 1042, 1055 (Fed. Cir. 2010), in support of its interpretation.
Los Angeles Biomedical Research Institute v. Eli Lilly & Co. (Fed. Cir. 2017)
Panel: Circuit Judges Newman, Bryson, and Moore
Opinion by Circuit Bryson; opinion concurring in part, dissenting from the judgment by Circuit Judge Newman
Eli Lilly & Co. v. Los Angeles Biomedical Research Institute (Fed. Cir. 2017)
Panel: Circuit Judges Newman, Bryson, and Moore
Opinion by Circuit Judge Newman
