Reuters/ Rick WilkingJ. Kyle Bass.
Texas hedge fund manager J. Kyle Bass’ major quick technique lives on.
The founder of Hayman Capital Management just scored a victory in his war against the pharmaceutical business and what he has named their “BS patents.”
Bass has been filing petitions with the US Patent and Trademark Workplace, challenging drugmakers’ patents although shorting their stocks. Some of the drugmakers responded by filing for sanctions and describing that strategy as an abuse of process.
The Patent Trial and Appeal Board, part of the PTO, said in a notice Friday that an financial motive is not “an abuse of procedure”:
Profit is at the heart of nearly just about every patent and practically each and every inter partes assessment. As such, an economic motive for difficult a patent claim does not itself raise abuse of procedure difficulties. We take no position on the merits of short-selling as an investment approach other than it is legal, and regulated.
This suggests Bass can continue to challenge drugmakers’ patents.
Bass made the Coalition for Economical Drugs earlier this year, and the group has now filed 36 inter partes review petitions with the PTO, difficult the validity of some drugmakers’ patents though also betting against the company’s stocks.
Some of his targets, like pharma giant Celgene, have filed motions with the PTO for sanctions on a claim of “abuse of course of action” by Bass, claiming he is driven by an financial motive. He has filed 5 IPRs against Celgene’s drug patents.
It’s all portion of an “activist brief method” that Bass thinks will finish what he considers to be “spend for delay” agreements that quit lower-expense generic drug competitors from entering the industry.
Bass has completely admitted a profit motive. He has also pointed out that the drug businesses are also in the business of creating revenue when they fight to keep their patents longer and hence to retain their drug costs high.
What is far more, on prime of Bass creating dollars for his fund and investors, if he is profitable, his actions could save American consumers significant amounts of funds.
But right now, the strategy is not playing out in Bass’ favor. He has had petitions for two drugs tossed out just before a trial could be held. He has said that he’s going to “fight” and that he’s “not a quitter.”
Bass’ companion in this effort, Erich Spangenberg, place out the adhere to statement on Friday evening:
The six member panel’s selection is obviously right as the law is crystal clear that “any individual other than the owner” can file an IPR and tends to make no mention of motivation, altruism or any of the other ruses raised by Celgene and Jones Day. I discover it ironic that Jones Day argued that the CFAD petitions are a waste of PTAB sources — I agree that a person right here was wasting PTAB resources and the perfunctory nature of the PTAB’s choice makes abundantly clear who that was in this case.
Now that this tomfoolery is behind us, my hope is that the PTAB will get to the merits and [contact] balls and strikes.
As the events of this past week demonstrate, with politicians, customer groups, regular and social media and each day Americans talking about higher drug rates and factors that need to have to be completed to reign them in, there is 1 US agency—the US patent office- that can ultimately standup and end the obscene evergreening practices engaged in by the likes of Celgene that imposes unfair penalties on sufferers and taxpayers. The PTAB institution rate on pharma IPRs is approximately 46% and far lower than the 75% plus rate for other technology places. Even though pharma makes these specious arguments about factors like the “unpredictable arts” and protecting investment, Pharma patents are entitled to no greater deference than any other patents in any other technologies location. If Congress wants to give 30 plus year monopolies to pharma corporations, they are cost-free to do so—this is not the appropriate part of the US patent office and the PTAB.
Here’s the filing:
sanctions denial
sanctions denial
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