Gilead ordered to pay rival record $2.5 billion in royalties

16 December 2016

Gilead Sciences (Nasdaq: GILD) plans to appeal against a federal jury’s decision to hand the company a record fine in a US patent infringement case.

The biotech company was found to have infringed the patent of fellow US company Merck & Co (NYSE: MRK) in its development of the big-selling hepatitis C drugs, Sovaldi (sofosbuvir) and Harvoni (ledipasvir/sofosbuvir).

These drugs account for more than half of Gilead’s revenue and the judge in the case decided that 10% of its takings from the treatments were owed to Merck, so came to a figure for the royalties of $2.54 billion, reports Bloomberg in its coverage of the case.

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