A sign stands outside a Abbvie facility in Cambridge, Massachusetts, U.S., May 20, 2021. REUTERS/Brian Snyder
(Reuters) - AbbVie Inc has avoided, for now, a whistleblower lawsuit claiming that its predecessor Allergan Inc used fraudulent patents to extend its monopoly on Alzheimer's drugs, allowing it to overcharge Medicare and Medicaid.
A unanimous three-judge panel of the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals held Thursday that the so-called public disclosure bar, which prohibits whistleblower complaints based on public information, applied to the lawsuit by Zachary Silbersher, a name partner at intellectual property litigation firm Kroub, Silbersher & Kolmykov. The ruling reversed a lower court's finding that the bar did not apply.
The ruling leaves open the possibility for Silbersher to argue that he is the "original source" of the public information, and so should be allowed to go forward.
Lawyers for Silbersher, Allergan and Adamas Pharmaceuticals Inc, which licensed the patents on Namenda XR and Namzaric to Allergan and is also named as a defendant in the case, did not immediately respond to requests for comment. Adamas has since been bought by Supernus Pharmaceuticals Inc.
Silbersher sued the companies in 2018 in San Francisco federal court under the False Claims Act (FCA), which allows whistleblowers to bring claims on behalf of the government and receive a share of any recovery if they succeed.
He alleged his search of U.S. Patent and Trademark Office (PTO)...
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