Aspire Pharmaceuticals, with the help of Accord Healthcare, won its first case at the UK Patents Court, officially declaring Allergan’s patent protecting the main formulation of their commercial enhanced Bimatroprost ophthalmic solution, known as Lumigan 0.01%, invalid.
Aspire and Accord both sought to market their own generic versions of Lumigan 0.1mg/mL, obtaining marketing authorizations which they did not dispute would infringe on Allergan’s European patent EP1753434, instead arguing successfully in front of the court that the patent was invalid on the grounds of obviousness.
Aspire’s successful argument was based on a paper by R. A .Laibovitz et al1, which the courts established as evidence of the composition being part of the common general knowledge (GGK) relating to developing ophthalmic eye drops containing Bimatoprost.
1 “Comparison of the Ocular Hypotensive Lipid AGN 192024 with Timolol”, Arch. Opthalmol., 119(7), 994-100 (2001)