Julian Cooke

Swiss pharmaceutical giant Novartis has lost its patent infringement case against Sydney-based generics company Pharmacor over a top-selling heart medication.

Cipla is opposing the extension of Novo Nordisk’s patent for its Victoza weight loss and diabetes drug, arguing extensions can only be granted for active ingredients and not entire formulations.

Green iron start-up Element Zero is continuing its fight over search orders won by rival Fortescue that it claimed were a massive over-reach.

Fortescue has defeated a bid by its former CFO’s green iron start-up to set aside search orders that were said to have been secured “off the back of egregious material non-disclosure”.  

Samsung Bioepis can’t get indemnity costs from Janssen Biotech after it surrendered patents for Crohn’s disease drug Stelara and filed a fresh case based on new patents for the drug. 

A judge has found ASX-traded mining equipment manufacturer Austin Engineering can use documents disclosed in its case against rival Schlam over a former employee’s alleged leak of confidential business information to expand its claims.

Fortescue has rejected Element Zero’s “implausible” claims that the start-up’s founder was instructed by the mining giant’s IP manager to access and delete certain documents after his resignation, as it defends allegations that search orders it won over the alleged misappropriation of its confidential information were based on weak evidence.

Start-up Element Zero has attacked search orders won by Fortescue over the alleged misappropriation of the mining company’s confidential information by three former employees, calling the orders an “industrial scale forensic debacle” won on weak evidence and the failure to disclose material information.

A judge appears reluctant to allow Element Zero to cross-examine an external lawyer hired by mining company Fortescue over alleged “egregious material non-disclosure” during Fortescue’s bid for “extreme and unorthodox” search orders against the green startup’s founders.

It would only have been possible for start-up Element Zero to deliver an operational green iron prototype in two years with its assumed funding with the help of a “substantial amount of information” on how the project should progress, metals giant Fortescue claims.