Following a jury trial in the US District Court of Delwar, it was found that GlaxoSmithKline’s (GSK) Ellipta® products infringed Vectura’s US patent 8303991.
The jury awarded Vectura $89.7m in damages for the period from August 2016 through to December 2018 2018, based on a calculation of 3% of US sales of these products. Vectura expects to seek application of the 3% royalty to the sales of the infringing products through the end of the patent term in mid-2021. The jury also found that GSK’s infringement was willful. The willfulness finding gives Vectura the right to seek enhanced damages. GSK has the option to appeal the decision.
Vectura and GSK had entered into an agreement in 2010 under which GSK had taken a license to formulation technology covered by a Vectura patent family. These licensed patents expired in July 2016. At this time GSK had the option to license additional patent families under the original agreement but declined to do so, resulting in the filing of the lawsuit by Vectura.
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