Life Sciences

  • December 04, 2024

    Takeda Exec Duped Beau Into $2M Fraud, Jury Told

    A Massachusetts man is accusing his wife, a former Takeda Pharmaceuticals vice president, of playing "puppet master" by tricking him into joining a scheme to steal millions from the drug company through fake invoices.

  • December 04, 2024

    Justices Seem To Back Ban On Transgender Youth Care

    The U.S. Supreme Court's conservative majority on Wednesday seemed poised to greenlight a Tennessee ban on minors receiving gender-affirming care, despite arguments from the court's liberal block that finding the law constitutional would fly in the face of the court's equal-protection precedents.

  • December 03, 2024

    Mich. AG Deal, NIH 4th Circ. Win And X Corp Bid In HIPAA Row

    Michigan's attorney general has agreed not to hold a Christian healthcare provider accountable to certain antidiscrimination protections related to gender and sexuality while the provider challenges them in court. Meanwhile, a New York federal judge decided to keep the largest anesthesiology provider in the U.S. on the hook for antitrust claims over its noncompete agreements with clinicians.

  • December 03, 2024

    Calif. Unveils Reproductive Rights Bills To Prep For Trump

    California lawmakers plan to introduce a pair of bills aimed at protecting access to abortion in the Golden State as Donald Trump returns to office, according to an announcement made Monday, the first day of a special legislative session called by Gov. Gavin Newsom.

  • December 03, 2024

    SEC Says Biopharma's Cooperation Helped It Avoid Penalty

    A Houston biopharmaceutical company accused of misleading investors about the regulatory status of two cancer drugs agreed to settle the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission's action against it on Tuesday without paying a dime, in recognition of what the SEC said was the company's self-reporting and cooperation with investigators.

  • December 03, 2024

    J&J's Neosporin Forever Discolored Man's Groin, Suit Says

    Johnson & Johnson and its consumer health spinoff were sued in California state court over claims that Neosporin antibiotic ointment badly infected a Los Angeles man's scrotum and permanently discolored his groin.

  • December 03, 2024

    $1B Sandoz Placeholder Bid Needs More Support, Judge Says

    A Connecticut federal judge on Tuesday said he cannot force Novartis spinoff Sandoz Inc. to set aside a $1 billion litigation placeholder in a generic drug pricing lawsuit without hearing whether the state attorney general can enforce possible orders in other states where the pharmaceutical company keeps assets.

  • December 03, 2024

    USPTO Abandons Polarizing Proposal Over Double Patenting

    The U.S. Patent and Trademark Office has withdrawn an extremely controversial proposal tied to double patenting, citing "resource constraints" in a Federal Register notice set to be published Wednesday.

  • December 03, 2024

    Vidal Aimed To Put USPTO Rulemaking In The Spotlight

    Kathi Vidal's tenure as director of the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office has been marked by dedication to making the agency's decisions and processes more transparent, attorneys said ahead of her mid-December departure.

  • December 03, 2024

    FDA Issues Guidance On Potential Infant Formula Shortages

    The U.S. Food and Drug Administration has put forth draft guidance on how the country's infant food manufacturers should tell the agency about permanent or temporary stoppages in the making of infant formula, several years after an outbreak and a national shortage.

  • December 03, 2024

    4 Mass. State Court Rulings You May Have Missed In Nov.

    An age discrimination case was undone by the fine print of an employment agreement, while an "utterly inadequate" document search led to a five-figure sanctions order, among other notable recent decisions in Massachusetts state court.

  • December 03, 2024

    VA Announces Study On MDMA-Assisted Therapy For Vets

    The U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs announced Tuesday it will fund a study on psychedelic-assisted therapy for veterans with post-traumatic stress disorder and alcohol use disorder, alongside researchers from Brown University and Yale University.

  • December 02, 2024

    House COVID-19 Probe Points to China 'Lab Leak'

    The Republican-led House Select Subcommittee on the Coronavirus Pandemic published the results of its two-year investigation into the origins of the COVID-19 pandemic Monday, concluding that COVID-19 "most likely" emerged from a laboratory in Wuhan, China, and heavily criticizing the Biden administration, Anthony Fauci and left-leaning organizations for their responses.

  • December 02, 2024

    Judge Isn't Seeing 'Good Faith' Compliance In Probiotic Feud

    A Maryland federal judge said Monday that a drug company is, yet again, failing to make "good faith substantial compliance" with the terms of an injunction that followed a $15 million jury verdict in a dispute over a proprietary probiotic formula.

  • December 02, 2024

    Justices Seem Inclined To Back FDA Block Of Flavored Vapes

    U.S. Supreme Court justices on Monday seemed skeptical of arguments by an e-cigarette company that the U.S. Food and Drug Administration acted unfairly in rejecting its applications to market its flavored vaping products, with several justices supporting the FDA's position that the company knew it had to counterbalance the risk of its products appealing to kids.

  • December 02, 2024

    Investor Alleges Medical Device Co. Misled On FDA Clearance

    The executives and directors of dialysis equipment company Outset Medical Inc. have been hit with a shareholder derivative suit in California federal court alleging they allowed the company to market its product without proper clearance from the U.S. Food and Drug Administration.

  • December 02, 2024

    Hagens Berman Sued For Slice Of Atty Fee From Effexor Deal

    A pharmaceutical reseller's in-house counsel and founder lodged a breach of contract suit against Hagens Berman in Mississippi federal court, accusing the law firm of refusing to pay him his share of a $13 million attorney fees award stemming from an antitrust class settlement with Pfizer Inc. unit Wyeth.

  • December 02, 2024

    Chancery OKs $21M Deal To End Gene Co. Class Suit

    A $21 million settlement of stockholder challenges to a blank check company's take-public merger with clinical data and genomics company Sema4 Holdings in July 2021 won Delaware Court of Chancery approval Monday, with nearly $4.1 million carved out for attorney fees.

  • December 02, 2024

    Fla. Tribe Sues Eli Lilly, CVS, Others Over Insulin Price-Fixing

    The Miccosukee Tribe in Florida is alleging drugmakers like Eli Lilly & Co. and pharmacy benefit managers like CVS illegally conspired to limit competition and artificially inflate the price of insulin drugs, according to a new lawsuit filed in New Jersey federal court.

  • December 02, 2024

    Heritage's $10M Generic Drugs Deal With AGs Gets 1st OK

    A Connecticut federal judge gave his initial approval on Monday to Heritage Pharmaceuticals Inc.'s $10 million settlement agreement with state attorneys general to resolve allegations it took part in an anticompetitive, price-fixing scheme focused on generic drugs.

  • December 02, 2024

    DEA Asserts Its Role As Proponent Of Pot Rescheduling Plan

    The Drug Enforcement Administration on Monday affirmed it was acting as the proponent of a proposal to loosen federal restrictions on marijuana, and the administrative law judge said supporters of rescheduling would not get an opportunity to cross-examine DEA witnesses.

  • December 02, 2024

    Ex-Parexel Worker Says Vax Rule Lacked 'Informed Consent'

    A former employee of clinical research firm Parexel International says the company's COVID-19 vaccine requirement was a breach of contract because she and other workers did not have the option of giving informed consent for what she calls an "experimental medical treatment," according to a lawsuit filed in Massachusetts state court.

  • December 02, 2024

    Shipping Industry Braces For Waves Of New Trump Tariffs

    After a holiday weekend marked by a fresh round of tariff threats from President-elect Donald Trump, the shipping and logistics industry is beginning to feel the heat, warning companies to prepare for massive upheaval if Trump follows through.

  • December 02, 2024

    Co-Worker's Affair Isn't Harassment, Research Co. Tells Court

    A clinical research company urged a Georgia federal judge to toss a former employee's suit claiming the business failed to take action when a co-worker made sexual comments about her father and began an affair with him, arguing the conduct isn't protected by federal civil rights law.

  • November 27, 2024

    A Look Back At Years Of Zantac Litigation: Timeline

    After the U.S. Food and Drug Administration raised a red flag five years ago that heartburn drug Zantac and its generics contained levels of a chemical that could cause cancer, litigation kicked off in federal and state courts. Here, Law360 presents a timeline of the lawsuits, trials and settlements that ensued.

Expert Analysis

  • Takeaways From Novo Nordisk's Fight For Market Exclusivity

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    Generic competitors’ challenge to Novo Nordisk’s patents in hopes of capturing a portion of the rapidly expanding Type 2 diabetes and obesity treatment market highlights the role of abbreviated new drug application litigation, inter partes review and multidistrict litigation in patent defense, says Pedram Sameni at Patexia.

  • Using Primacy And Recency Effects In Opening Statements

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    By understanding and strategically employing the primacy and recency effects in opening statements, attorneys can significantly enhance their persuasive impact, ensuring that their narrative is both compelling and memorable from the outset, says Bill Kanasky at Courtroom Sciences.

  • Secret Service Failures Offer Lessons For Private Sector GCs

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    The Secret Service’s problematic response to two assassination attempts against former President Donald Trump this summer provides a crash course for general counsel on how not to handle crisis communications, says Keith Nahigian at Nahigian Strategies.

  • Opinion

    Bill Is Key To Protecting US Economy From Patent Piracy

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    It is critical that Congress pass a recently introduced bill that would protect U.S. investors from intellectual property theft by restoring court-ordered injunctions as the default remedy in patent infringement cases to ensure inventors get the justice they deserve, says Andrei Iancu at Sullivan & Cromwell.

  • Defending AI, Machine Learning Patents In Life Sciences

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    Ten years after the U.S. Supreme Court's decision in Alice v. CLS Bank, artificial intelligence and machine learning technology remain at risk for Alice challenges, but reviewing recent cases can help life sciences companies avoid common pitfalls and successfully defend their patents, say attorneys at Mintz.

  • Litigation Inspiration: Honoring Your Learned Profession

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    About 30,000 people who took the bar exam in July will learn they passed this fall, marking a fitting time for all attorneys to remember that they are members in a specialty club of learned professionals — and the more they can keep this in mind, the more benefits they will see, says Bennett Rawicki at Hilgers Graben.

  • From Concept To Capital: 5 Stages Of Evolving IP Needs

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    Companies must understand the shifting intellectual property needs throughout an organization’s life cycle in order to protect innovation, which can be done by fortifying the IP portfolio, expanding and leveraging IP assets, and more, says Keegan Caldwell at Caldwell Law.

  • Allergan Ruling Reinforces Value Of Patent Term Adjustments

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    The Federal Circuit’s recent ruling in Allergan v. MSN, which held that patent term adjustment awards for first-filed, first-issued patents cannot be stripped away by later-issuing child patents that expire earlier, means practitioners must consider the potential impact of any action that might reduce the adjustment amount, say attorneys at Cooley.

  • FTC Focus: How Scrutiny Of PBMs And Insulin May Play Out

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    Should Express Scripts' recent judicial challenge to the Federal Trade Commission succeed, any new targets could add litigation and choice of forum to their playbooks, and potential FTC court action on insulin could be forced to parallel venues as the issues between the commission and PBMs evolve, say attorneys at Proskauer.

  • Opinion

    AI May Limit Key Learning Opportunities For Young Attorneys

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    The thing that’s so powerful about artificial intelligence is also what’s most scary about it — its ability to detect patterns may curtail young attorneys’ chance to practice the lower-level work of managing cases, preventing them from ever honing the pattern recognition skills that undergird creative lawyering, says Sarah Murray at Trialcraft.

  • Series

    Round-Canopy Parachuting Makes Me A Better Lawyer

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    Similar to the practice of law, jumping from an in-flight airplane with nothing but training and a few yards of parachute silk is a demanding and stressful endeavor, and the experience has bolstered my legal practice by enhancing my focus, teamwork skills and sense of perspective, says Thomas Salerno at Stinson.

  • And Now A Word From The Panel: The MDL Map

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    An intriguing yet unpredictable facet of multidistrict litigation practice is venue selection for new MDL proceedings, and the Judicial Panel on Multidistrict Litigation considers many factors when it assigns an MDL venue, says Alan Rothman at Sidley Austin.

  • Navigating Restrictions Following Biotech Bill House Passage

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    Ahead of the BIOSECURE Act’s potential enactment, companies that obtain equipment from certain Chinese biotechnology companies should consider whether the act would restrict their ability to enter into contracts with the U.S. government and what steps they might take in response, say attorneys at Ropes & Gray.

  • Why Now Is The Time For Law Firms To Hire Lateral Partners

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    Partner and associate mobility data from the second quarter of this year suggest that there's never been a better time in recent years for law firms to hire lateral candidates, particularly experienced partners — though this necessitates an understanding of potential red flags, say Julie Henson and Greg Hamman at Decipher Investigative Intelligence.

  • A Look At The Economic Impact Of Drug Patent Differentiation

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    Given the Federal Trade Commission’s recent emphasis on unfair competition based on disputed patent listings, pharmaceutical market participants are likely to require nuanced characterizations of actual and but-for market competition when multiple patents differentiate multiple products, say economists at Competition Dynamics.

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