In 2018, "Severnaya Zvezda" NJSC challenged the Eurasian patent of Eli Lilly's subsidiary named ICOS Corporation, having obtained the right to sell in the Russian Federation a drug based on Tadalafil, a modern analogue of Viagra and Cialis. In the opinion of "Severnaya Zvezda" NJSC, the entire group of inventions under the contested patent does not meet the “novelty” and “inventive step” requirement of patentability. The Chamber of Patent Disputes Panel agreed that there was no novelty in the contested patent and canceled the patent of ICOS Corporation.
Since 2018, the head of PATENTUS Patent Practice, Aleksey Mikhailov, has challenged several more patents of the opponent, and also has defended the decision of Chamber for Patent Disputes of 2018 in the Intellectual Property Rights Court in December 2020.
In December case, the arguments of the plaintiff's representatives from Gowling WLG did not convince the court to invalidate the decision of the Federal Intellectual Property Service. ICOS Corporation was denied both in the appointment of a forensic examination to clarify a number of issues and the satisfaction of the plaintiff's claims.
It is important to note that the volume of Tadalafil market in Russia in 2020 exceeded 4 billion rubles and continues to grow steadily. Victory in a patent dispute opens up 20% of the market for erectile dysfunction drugs for our client.