Alvotech filed a federal lawsuit against AbbVie in the US District Court of the Eastern District of Virginia, seeking to clear patent barriers relating to proposed biosimilar adalimumab, AVT02. Alvotech alleges that AbbVie has sought to protect its product monopoly by ‘overwhelming’ Alvotech with 60+ patent claims with questionable validity. Specifically, Alvotech alleges that AbbVie has acted improperly by:
- ‘patenting purported inventions that it does not use in the production of Humira®
- seeking multiple patents on the same invention but as part of different patent families in a manner designed to cause confusion;
- obtaining patents through inequitable conduct;
- by seeking patents that cover Humira® already in the prior art; and
- obtaining patents on purported inventions that AbbVie did not invent.‘
AbbVie’s Humira® still holds a monopoly in the US, despite biosimilars being available in the EU, Japan, Canada and Australia.