A high-stakes decision on whether to extend U.S. marketing exclusivity of Eli Lilly and Co’s blockbuster Alimta lung cancer drug is not expected until next year, following a two-week trial in Indianapolis federal court. Most industry analysts have long assumed the $2.6 billion-a-year drug will lose U.S. patent protection and face competition from cheaper generics in January 2017, with the lapse of the basic patent on the pill’s chemical structure. But Lilly argued during the trial before U.S. District Court Judge Tanya Walton Pratt that a separate “method-of-use” patent on the way Alimta is administered should protect the medicine from U.S. generics until 2022.
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