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The Intellectual Property Appellate Board has revoked two of Allergan’s patents on medicines for eye-related treatments.
The products covered by these patents Ganfort and Combigan respectively are prescribed for the treatment of intra-ocular pressure and glaucoma.
The development follows GlaxoSmithKline’s patent on breast cancer drug Tykerb being invalidated by the IPAB last week. However, another patent on the base compound Lapatinib had been upheld.
In the Allergan case, both patents were granted by the Kolkata Patent Office in December 2007 and May 2008 respectively.
Ganfort is a fixed dose combination of the actives Bimatoprost and Timolol, whereas Combigan is a fixed dose combination of the actives Brimonidine and Timolol.
Ajanta Pharma Ltd had applied for the revocation of both these patents under independent applications in 2011 on the grounds of obviousness, not an invention, not patentable, insufficiency and non-disclosure under Section 8 of the Patents Act (2005).
The IPAB held that both the inventions are obvious and the patentee had violated the requirement under Section 8.
The latest IPAB orders come against the backdrop of a string of patent-related battles between drug companies as they test the amended Patents Act.
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