A record-breaking verdict for Centocor

A federal jury yesterday awarded Horsham-based pharmaceutical company Centocor Ortho Biotech Inc. $1.67 billion in what is being described as the largest patent-infringement verdict in U.S. history.

The jury found that Illinois-based Abbott Laboratories used an invention by Centocor, a division of Johnson & Johnson, to produce the arthritis drug Humira.

The trial took place in U.S. District Court in the Eastern District of Texas, where Centocor filed a lawsuit against Abbott in 2007, seeking $2.1 billion in lost profit and royalties.

In a statement issued last night, Kim Taylor, president of Centocor, which employs 1,600 locally, said: "We are particularly gratified that the jury recognized our valuable intellectual property, finding our patent both valid and infringed.

"We will continue to assert intellectual property rights for our immunology therapies, as they offer significant advances in treatment for patients with a number of immune-mediated inflammatory diseases."

Abbott intends to appeal the jury's award and is "confident we'll win," said spokesman Scott Stoffel.

Centocor contended that Humira, Abbott's top seller accounting for $4.5 billion in worldwide sales last year, is made using technology developed by New York University and exclusively licensed to Centocor.

That invention related to antibodies against tumor necrosis factor, known as TNF, a biological compound associated with inflammatory diseases. Humira works by blocking the action of TNF.

Johnson & Johnson's competing arthritis drug is Remicade, which Centocor manufactures in Malvern.

Stoffel said yesterday that the evidence at trial "clearly established that Humira was the first of its kind, fully human, anti-TNF antibody medicine" while Remicade is partially made from mouse DNA.

Johnson & Johnson "did not launch a fully human product until April 2009. In fact, only when Humira was nearing its approval in 2002 did [Johnson & Johnson] amend the patent at issue in this litigation to claim that it had discovered fully human antibodies in 1994," Stoffel said.

Stoffel said Johnson & Johnson experts testified at trial that they did not start working on a fully human antibody until 1997, two years after Abbott says it discovered Humira and one year after Abbott filed its patent applications for the drug.

Johnson & Johnson shares rose 36 cents yesterday to $56.96, and were up 4 cents in after-hours trading. Abbott shares rose 39 cents to $47.82, but fell $1.47 or 3.07 percent in after-hours trading.