Novo-Nordisk and Pfizer reportedly settled their patent litigation this week over Pfizer’s failed Exubera inhaled insulin and Novo’s AERx insulin that the Danish drugmaker has been developing with Aradigm Corp.
The litigation started just before Pfizer brought Exubera to market (after considerable delays), and continued for just over a year.
Novo claimed that Exubera infringed on a host of patents that it had for inhaled insulin. In its answer to the lawsuit, Pfizer stressed that the real reason behind Novo’s suit was “to preserve indefinitely the inhaled insulin market for Novo.”
Although the settlement agreement was reported late Monday, terms of the deal were not made public.
Pfizer announced that it was pulling Exubera from the market on October 18, 2007. Given that Pfizer originally paid Sanofi-Aventis $1.3 billion to acquire exclusive worldwide rights to market the first FDA-approved inhaled diabetes drug, yet only generated $4 million in Exubera sales for Q2 2007, it is no surprise that the drugmaker opted to stop spending money on lawyers fees when it no longer had a product to justify the litigation expense.
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