Patent Law

Split Court Denies Rehearing En Banc in Sun Pharmaceuticals v. Eli Lilly

By Jason Rantanen

By Jason Rantanen

Sun Pharmaceutical Industries, Ltd. v. Eli Lilly and Company (Fed. Cir. 2010) (denial of rehearing and rehearing en banc)

In Sun Pharmaceutical, a Federal Circuit panel affirmed a district court determination that Eli Lilly's patent for a method of using gemcitabine to treat cancer was invalid due for obviousness-type double patenting based on another application, filed the same day, claiming the compound gemcitabine and disclosing its use for treating cancer.  (The previous Patently-O write-up is here).  This morning the Federal Circuit issued an order denying Eli Lilly's petition for rehearing and rehearing en banc.  The court was closely split on the latter, with four of the nine currently sitting judges dissenting on the decision not to rehear the decision en banc.

The dissent's principal concern was that, in its view, the panel opinion involved a departure from precedent, thus creating an intra-circuit split.  According to the dissent,

the panel held the claims to the anticancer use to be invalid for double patenting because the anticancer use was mentioned (but not claimed) in the continuation-in-part specification that is not prior art, stating that ?[t]he asserted claims of the later ?826 patent simply claim the anticancer use disclosed in the specification of the ?614 patent,? reported at 611 F.3d at 1389.

The dissent pointed out that this approach, which focused on the disclosure of the simultaneously filed patent, not its claims, was contrary to precedent:

Uniformly, unlike examination for obviousness based on prior art, the issue of obviousness-type double patenting is directed to whether the invention claimed in a later patent is an obvious variant of the invention claimed in an earlier patent. The panel opinion violates a vast body of precedent.

Furthermore, according to the dissent, expanding the doctrine of obviousness-type double patenting to the facts of this case serves no good policy purpose and creates a schism in the law - a schism that should be addressed by the court en banc:

A change of law ?in ways that negatively impact the patentability of important later-discovered uses? serves no public purpose in areas in which commercial development requires patent protection. Id. If the majority of the court now believes, as a matter of policy, that the law should be changed in this new direction, en banc treatment is particu-larly appropriate, for the court?s rule is that the earlier precedent prevails unless overruled en banc. A situation in which the court ignores this rule, and applies whatever law the panel prefers, is an indictment of the ability of this court to provide stable law in the areas entrusted to us.

Comment: Given that there are currently only nine sitting Federal Circuit judges, it seems unlikely that the court will grant a rehearing en banc absent extraordinary circumstances - especially in cases where the panel decision was unanimous.  In that situation, in order for an appeal to be reheard en banc, at least five of the six judges who did not participate on the panel would need to vote to rehear the decision en banc.  Of course, there are instances when this would not apply, as senior judges and visiting judges frequently participate in panel determinations, but it is something to keep in mind for the near future.

Full post as published by Patently Obvious on November 01, 2010 (boomark / email).