Merck & Co have been awarded $2.54 billion in royalties by a federal jury in Delaware for a patent lawsuit against Gilead Sciences. The case was over Sovaldi and Harvoni, Gilead's blockbuster hepatitis C drugs
The patent upheld by the jury was originally issued to Idenix Pharmaceuticals, which was acquired by Merck in 2014.
In February, a compound in Gilead’s Sovaldi and Harvoni was found by a judge to have infringed Merck’s patents, and Merck sued Gilead for more than $3 billion in a patent dispute. On March 24, an order from a federal jury had Gilead set to pay $200M in damages to Merck, but the decision was overturned in June.
Read the Reuters report