Momenta Pharmaceuticals, Inc. (MNTA)

[DewDiligence]

The DoJ’s brief for the USSC on the Copaxone patent case is bullish for MNTA, IMO; this is one of the relevant passages:

The Federal Circuit reversed the district court’s indefiniteness ruling after engaging in de novo review. Although de novo review was appropriate with respect to the district court’s ultimate determination that the challenged claims were not indefinite, the court of appeals was required to accept the district court’s factual findings unless it concluded that they were clearly erroneous.

The Federal Circuit’s indefiniteness analysis was in the main consistent with that requirement. In one respect, however, the court of appeals departed without justification from the district court’s factual findings [i.e. the CAFC’s rejection of the District Court’s factual finding vis-à-vis a molecular-weight chart referred to as “Figure 1”]. Although it appears unlikely that this error affected the court of appeals’ ultimate holding, this Court should vacate the judgment below and remand the case to allow the Federal Circuit to apply the correct standard of review in the first instance.

[Emphasis added by me.]

In other words, the CAFC had reasons apart from its disagreement with the District Court on the interpretation of “Figure 1” to reject the District’s Court’s ruling in favor of Teva on indefiniteness; specifically, the CAFC cited the inconsistent stipulations made by Teva to the USPTO regarding the term, molecular weight in the USPTO’s prosecution of two Teva patents unrelated to Copaxone.

Upon remand by the USSC to the CAFC, the above finding by the CAFC should give the CAFC sufficient grounds to re-iterate its ruling on the ‘808 Copaxone patent in favor of NVS/MNTA/MYL.