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The Korea Herald
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THE INVESTOR
October 06, 2024

Bio

Court rules in favor of Celltrion’s Truxima biosimilar

  • PUBLISHED :January 18, 2019 - 14:28
  • UPDATED :January 18, 2019 - 14:48
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[THE INVESTOR] Korea’s leading biosimilar firm Celltrion announced on Jan. 18 that it has won a lawsuit over invalidating Samsung Biogen’s patent on Rituxan, a blockbuster drug for treating non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma.

The court’s decision upholds the legitimacy of the previous ruling of the Intellectual Property Trial and Appeal Board, which also ordered the nullification of the patent.




The lawsuit was filed because under the current law biosimilar makers must invalidate the patent of the original drug before launching their products.

Celltrion had filed five lawsuits in 2015 to invalidate the sales of Truxima, its copy version of Rituxan. The recent ruling was the last hurdle among the five lawsuits that it had filed.

“With the domestic patent invalidation, obstacles to sales of Truxima here, are settled. So, we will now try to create a stable sales environment to provide a wide range of biosimilar treatments for patients who could not receive proper medication due to high costs,” a Celltrion official said in a statement.

Meanwhile, in November, Truxima, also known as CT-P10, obtained approval of the US Food and Drug Administration. The biosimilar also surpassed 35 percent market share in five European countries -- France, Italy, Germany, Spain and the United Kingdom -- during the third quarter last year and is currently set to be sold in 22 European countries during the first half of this year.

By Song Seung-hyun (ssh@heraldcorp.com)

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