What are you looking forward to in 2010? For the Anglo-Swedish drug company AstraZeneca, it's a February trial that will test its intellectual property rights to the blockbuster cholesterol drug Crestor. Seven pharmaceutical companies seeking to make generic versions of Crestor have challenged the validity and enforceability of AstraZeneca's patent on the drug. Among other things, the generic manufacturers contend that AstraZeneca committed inequitable conduct by withholding certain information from the Patent and Trademark Office when it applied for the Crestor patent.
The generics got some good news Friday, when Wilmington federal magistrate judge Leonard Stark recommended that AstraZeneca's summary judgment motion on inequitable conduct be denied. "It may well be, as [AstraZeneca asserts], that the non-disclosures here were due to mistake and inadvertence, but making a final determination on this matter will require the fact finder to assess the credibility of the witnesses," he wrote.
Neil McCrae, a spokesman for AstraZeneca, told Reuters that it still believes it will win when federal district court judge Joseph Farnan hears the case. "We remain confident that we will prevail on these issues at trial," said McCra
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