Biotech Values

[JohnWayne]

Novartis has guided in recent calls that the base patent (I would presume the composition of matter patent, but I haven't really looked into it) for Gleevec expires in the US in late 2015. However, they also have a variety of patents on other isoforms/polymorphs/crstalline formulations that they will try to use to defend against generics beyond the base patent expiry. They have stated that they will provide a summary of these at the R&D day tomorrow, so maybe some more clarity there.

I am not sure where the 2019 date on the ARIAD call came from specifically, but Novartis has been suggesting that they will aggressively defend against generics beyond the 2015 patent expiry. How likely they are to achieve this is another question, that I do not feel at all qualified to answer!