(Reuters) – A federal appeals court on Wednesday upheld two patents for Amgen Inc’s multibillion-dollar rheumatoid arthritis drug Enbrel, rejecting Novartis AG’s effort to void the patents.
In a 2-1 decision, the U.S. Federal Circuit Court of Appeals, which oversees intellectual property cases, affirmed the judgment of a lower court, which had found that Novartis’ Sandoz generic drugs unit failed to prove that claims underlying Amgen’s patents were invalid.
Sandoz had applied to market Erelzi, a biosimilar version of Enbrel.
(Reporting by Jonathan Stempel in New York; Editing by Bill Berkrot)
