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Federal Court Declares Servier's Patent Valid and Infringed

CLIENT

Servier Canada Inc.

DATE

July 18, 2008

On July 18, 2008, the Federal Court of Canada granted Servier Canada Inc.'s claim for patent infringement against Apotex Inc.  In the process, the Court rejected Apotex's counterclaim that Servier's patent was invalid, and further rejected Apotex's counterclaim under the Competition Act.

The patent in suit protects Servier's perindopril medication, an antihypertensive.  The patent application was filed in 1981, but as a result of being placed in conflict with other pending patent applications, only issued in 2001 following a consent order of the Federal Court.  Infringement of a number of the claims was admitted by Apotex, therefore the thrust of the action revolved mainly on the invalidity counterclaim.  A number of grounds of invalidity were asserted by the defendant, including that the claims were obvious, lacked utility and that the inventors did not have a sound prediction to support the breadth of the claims.  Further, issues of inventorship and corrections under Section 8 of the Patent Act were put into play, all of which were rejected by the Court.

The defendant's Competition Act counterclaim, namely that an unlawful agreement had been entered into between Servier and other pharmaceutical companies was also dismissed by the Court.

Madame Justice Snider issued a permanent injunction and granted Servier the right to elect between its damages or an accounting of the defendant's profits.

The Ogilvy Renault team was comprised of Judith Robinson, Daniel A. Artola, Joanne Chriqui, Richard Wagner, Julie Dallaire, Kavita Ramamoorthy, Rebecca Crane, David Badurina, Ian Clarke, Horia Bundaru and Vanessa Rochester.

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