United therapy won a lawsuit against Novartis for the patent right of traprostanil

Source: Ding Xiangyuan's shares soared nearly 29% on September 2, 2014, when United therapy announced a U.S District Court ruling in favor of a patent dispute between the company and traprostanil, a Novartis pulmonary hypertension drug (PAH) According to the joint treatment, Sheridan, a judge of the New Jersey district court, ruled that Sandoz would not be able to market the generic troprostil injection until October 2017 In this case, joint therapy accused Sandoz of infringing the company's patent, which in 2011 applied for approval of a generic drug from traprostil In Sheridan's decision, he argued that the patent had no claimed features and that the troprostil generic could not be commercialized The ruling also ruled that a second patent, due to expire in 2029, was also valid, but that the patent would not be infringed by Sandoz's generic drugs The company said it was evaluating the court's decision and was planning on the next step in its second patent program A Novartis spokesman declined to comment Schoenebaum, an analyst at the international strategic investment group, commented that the ruling could give additional three years of protection to traprostil He added, "in our opinion, this is almost the best situation, because there seems to be a large number behind the combination therapy Investors believe that the sales of the combination therapy orenitram is better than expected This drug is a sustained-release oral preparation of traprostanil, which was approved by the FDA for PAH in December last year However, leerink analysts Schwartz and matteis believe that the ruling is not as favorable as they think, pointing out that the listing of generic drugs in 2017 means a significant decline in the franchise of traprostil Approved in 2002, traprostanil sold $274.3 million in the first half of 2014, accounting for 45% of total combined therapy sales.