TRUVADA Patent Invalidated by Conference Call With Investors Outside of Grace Period

Gilead Sciences, Inc v Apotex, Inc 2016 FC 856 Brown J
            2,512,475 / TRUVADA

In this chapter of the continuing TRUVADA saga, Brown J held Gilead’s 475 patent invalid as being anticipated, or in the alternative, obvious, on the basis of a disclosure made by Gilead executives in the course of a conference call with investors. The filing date was 13 January, 2004, and the conference call, which was public [67], took place more than one year before, on 2 December, 2002, and so outside the one year grace period for disclosure by the inventor set out in s 28.2(1)(a) and s 28.3(a). The argument for anticipation or obviousness based on the conference call was very strong, and the main tactic of Gilead’s counsel was to try to keep the conference call transcript out of evidence by instructing the Gilead witnesses not to produce the conference call transcript, in violation of Rule 94(1), and without seeking the relief of Rule 94(2) [60], [61]. Brown J held that in the circumstances hearsay evidence of the conference call transcript introduced by Apotex was admissible as being both necessary and reliable [60]. The holding on anticipation [97] and obviousness [120-21] followed directly. Apotex also argued lack of utility, but Brown J construed the promise of the patent modestly [139], and found that the promised utility was soundly predicted [143].

As a minor point, Brown J found that the conference call, which was public [67], would have been known to a person skilled in the art [103], but I don’t see a specific holding by Brown J that it was part of the state of the art, in the sense of being common general knowledge or prior art which would be discovered in a reasonably diligent search directed to the problem at hand. As noted here, there is an issue as to whether the art that can be used in an obviousness attack includes only the state of the art, so defined, or all prior art. This would potentially have been an important point had the decision rested primarily on obviousness, but given that anticipation was the primary basis for Brown J’s holding of invalidity, nothing turned on it.