On 14 November, the Supreme Court handed down its judgment on the validity and infringement of the second medical use patent that protected Pfizer’s Lyrica® (pregabalin) for the treatment of various types of pain. In Warner-Lambert Company LLC v Generics (UK) Ltd (t/a Mylan) & Anor [2018] UKSC 56, the Court decided that the patent held by Warner-Lambert (a company in the Pfizer group) was invalid for insufficiency, because it did not render it plausible that pregabalin would be effective to treat all of the claimed types of pain. The Court also held that, had the claims been valid, they would not have been infringed by a “skinny label” generic version of pregabalin that had the protected indications carved out. However, the five judges of the Court were not in agreement on several key points.
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