Pfizer’s Genetics Institute asserts patent rights

Lawyers for Pfizer Inc’s Genetics Institute, challenged by a Novartis AG unit, asked a federal judge to rule that a 1989 patent for the hemophilia medicine ReFacto is the first invention of its kind. Genetics Institute, then part of Wyeth, sued in May 2008 in Delaware after a unit of Basel, Switzerland-based Novartis accused Wyeth in federal court in Texas of infringing two patents for the so-called clotting factor VIII. New York-based Pfizer bought Wyeth in October. “We were the inventors, before they ever conceived it,” lawyer Barbara McCurdy, representing Cambridge, Massachusetts- based Genetics Institute, told US District Judge Sue L. Robinson in opening statements at the non-jury trial in Wilmington. Genetics Institute is also asking Robinson to rule that the Novartis technology isn’t new, and that its two patents aren’t valid, according to court papers.