US courts uphold patents for Eli Lilly's Alimta and Otsuka/Bristol-Myers Abilify

There was good news for two US drug majors this week, when different district courts upheld intellectual property rights for Eli Lilly (NYSE: LLY) for its cancer drug Alimta (pemetrexed) and Bristol-Myers Squibb (NYSE: BMY) for schizophrenia treatment Abilify (aripiprazole), which is partnered with Japan’s Otsuka.

Lilly announced that the trial on the validity of the compound patent for Alimta for injection before the US District Court for the District of Delaware ended with a ruling that judgment would be entered in Lilly's favor, thereby upholding the patent's validity. The decision came in the case of Lilly versus Teva Parenteral Medicines, a unit of Israeli generics giant Teva Pharmaceutical Industries (Nasdaq: TEVA). The patent provides protection for Alimta until July of 2016.

"We are pleased that the District Court has now confirmed the validity of Alimta's compound patent," said Robert Armitage, senior vice president and general counsel for Lilly. "We continue to emphasize that protection of intellectual property rights is extremely important to the biopharmaceutical industry and the patients we serve. These rights provide assurances of market exclusivity that help support the development of the next generation of innovative medicines to treat unmet medical needs," he argued.