A U.S. appeals court threw out the ban on the sale of Regeneron Pharmaceuticals and Sanofi’s cholesterol-lowering drug Praluent, and ordered a new trial after deciding that mistakes were made with the original jury.
Earlier this year, district court ruled that Sanofi and Regeneron had infringed the patents that competitor Amgen holds for its PCSK9 inhibitor, Repatha.
Praluent and Repatha are both injectable biologics that dramatically lower levels of “bad” LDL cholesterol in the blood by blocking the protein, PCSK9. Amgen claimed its patents covered a range of antibodies that bind to PCSK9, while Sanofi and Regeneron argued against the broad patents.
The new ruling determined that jurors in the original trial had been given confusing instructions about PCSK9 and that the judge in the case improperly excluded some evidence.
Read the Reuters coverage