Roche Wins Patent Dispute Against Cipla

An Indian court has unexpectedly sided with Swiss drugmaker Roche in a long-running patent dispute with Indian generics giant Cipla.

A two-judge panel for the Delhi High Court concluded that Cipla violated a patent for Roche’s lung cancer drug Tarceva (erlotinib) and ordered it to pay damages and the Swiss company’s legal fees.

The cost to Cipla will be determined at a later date, based to a large degree on the profits made from sales of its generic cancer drug Erlocip, for which the patent was violated.

Commentators said the decision flies in the face of multiple court decisions dating back to 2008 in the long-running case, all of which Cipla had won.

In the Roche decision, the panel said lower court rulings and a division assessment had erred in supporting Cipla’s challenge to the patent over a perceived lack of innovation and questions as to whether patent protection extends to different molecular configurations of the same ingredients.

At the same time, the judges declined to grant Roche an injunction to stop Cipla from marketing Erlocip, noting that the Indian patent is due to expire in March 2016.

Cipla has been accused of violating foreign drugmakers’ patents in India numerous times. In other 2015 cases, the company is reported to have won a patent challenge against Boehringer Ingelheim in March. Before that, it was successfully parried by an injunction filed by Novartis in January.