GILEAD SCIENCES, INC. LONDON, UK / ACCESSWIRE / February 21, 2018 / Active-Investors.com has just released a free research report on Gilead Sciences, Inc. (NASDAQ: GILD) ("Gilead"). If you want access to this report all you need to do is sign up now by clicking the following link www.active-investors.com/registration-sg/?symbol=GILD as the Company's latest news hit the wire. On February 16, 2018, the US District Judge Leonard Stark in Wilmington, Delaware gave his verdict in the patent infringement case between two pharma giants Gilead Sciences and Merck & Co. Inc. (NYSE: MRK) regarding Hepatitis C drugs Sovaldi and Harvoni. An earlier jury in 2016 had directed Gilead Sciences to pay a record fine of $2.54 billion to Merck for infringing on the patents related to the two Hepatitis C drugs. Judge Stark's ruling reversed the earlier jury's verdict and ruled in favor of Gilead. Register today and get access to over 1,000 Free Research Reports by joining our site below:
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Judge Stark's ruling
Judge Stark overruled the earlier jury's $2.5 billion verdict against Gilead favoring Merck in the patent infringement case related to Sovaldi and Harvoni. The Judge ruled that Merck's patents claims were not specific enough for an experienced scientist to successfully re-create the formula and hence were invalid. He stated that as the invention it did not meet the criteria as to which explained how the "treatment can be made without undue experimentation". As a result of this ruling, Gilead will no longer have to pay $2.4 billion in royalties to Merck.
This is one of the biggest patent infringement cases in the US so far. Gilead was pleased with the verdict and in a statement issued by the Company, it stated that it always believed the patent was invalid and was pleased the judge confirmed that opinion.
However, Merck's response was that it believed the judge's ruling did not reflect the facts of the case and plans to appeal against the ruling.
Backdrop
The case revolves around two drugs - sofosbuvir (Sovaldi) and ledipasvir-sofosbuvir (Harvoni), which are part of Gilead's portfolio of drugs for fighting against Hepatitis C. Hepatitis C is a viral disease that causes inflammation of the liver that can lead to liver failure. It is estimated that approximately 3.2 million Americans are infected by this disease. These two drugs have revolutionized treatment of Hepatitis C as they had demonstrated 90% success rate during clinical trials. Sovaldi was launched in 2013 and is a prescription medicine used with other antiviral medicines to treat adults with chronic Hepatitis C with or without cirrhosis. Whereas Harvoni which was launched in 2014, is a prescription medicine used to treat adults with chronic Hepatitis C genotype (GT) 1, 4, 5, or 6 infections with or without cirrhosis. As per a report by Gilead, the sales of its four Hepatitis C drugs including Harvoni and Sovaldi had crossed $9.1 billion in FY17.
Merck had acquired Idenix Pharmaceuticals in 2014 and the patents for the compounds for the Hepatitis C treatments were a part of this acquisition. However, Idenix had already filed a case against Gilead in 2013 for patent infringement in 2013 seeking to block the launch of Sovaldi which had received approval from US FDA in December 2013. Hence the legal battle between Idenix and Gilead became the fight between Merck and Gilead.
However, in 2011 Gilead acquired Pharmasset, the original developer of the drug Sovaldi and Gilead launched the drug in 2013 when Idenix sued it. Idenix's claim was that Raymond Schinazi, who was the founder of Pharmasset, had worked with Idenix as a consultant and was close to Jean-Pierre Sommadossi, Idenix's Co-founder. Idenix claimed that Raymond shared proprietary information about Idenix's research with his scientists at Pharmasset.
Merck's claim was that Sovaldi and Harvoni infringed on two of its patents on compounds related to sofosbuvir, the active ingredient in these two drugs. The jury of the US District Court in Delaware hearing the case had ruled in December 2016 that Gilead had infringed on Merck's patents while developing its Hepatitis C drugs Sovaldi and Harvoni. The jury's verdict was that Gilead should pay $2.54 billion (i.e. approximately 10% as royalties on the sales of the two drugs which had crossed $25.4 billion in sales from 2013 to 2015) to Merck. Gilead had appealed against the jury's verdict.
Stock Performance Snapshot
February 20, 2018 - At Tuesday's closing bell, Gilead Sciences' stock marginally rose 0.30%, ending the trading session at $80.94.
Volume traded for the day: 7.21 million shares.
Stock performance in the last three-month ? up 11.78%; previous six-month period ? up 12.25%; past twelve-month period ? up 15.88%; and year-to-date - up 12.98%
After yesterday's close, Gilead Sciences' market cap was at $106.81 billion.
Price to Earnings (P/E) ratio was at 23.23.
The stock has a dividend yield of 2.82%.
The stock is part of the Healthcare sector, categorized under the Biotechnology industry.
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