Deals & Cases

MLL Legal represented Bayer Intellectual Property GmbH in a successful appeal before the Swiss Federal Supreme Court
The patent litigation team of MLL Legal successfully represented Bayer Intellectual Property GmbH in an appeal before the Swiss Federal Supreme Court against decision by the Swiss Federal Patent Court rejecting a request for preliminary injunction against Helvepharm AG’s rivaroxaban generic.
The patent litigation team of MLL Legal successfully represented Bayer Intellectual Property GmbH in an appeal before the Swiss Federal Supreme Court. The subject of the appeal was a decision issued by the Swiss Federal Patent Court of 1 July 2024, concerning Bayer’s patent (EP 1 845 961) on the once-daily administration of rivaroxaban. With this first-instance judgment, the Swiss Federal Patent Court rejected a request for an ex-parte preliminary injunction filed by Bayer against Helvepharm AG’s pharmaceutical product “Rivaroxaban Zentiva” – a generic of Bayer’s blockbuster anticoagulant Xarelto®.
The Swiss Federal Patent Court had rejected the ex-parte preliminary injunction request due to arguments presented in a protective letter previously filed by Helvepharm without giving Bayer the opportunity to comment on the protective letter and without conducting inter partes preliminary injunction proceedings after the rejection. The Federal Supreme Court concluded that the Federal Patent Court had violated Bayer’s constitutional right to be heard with this decision. It held that in principle, ex-parte preliminary injunction proceedings must always be followed by inter partes proceedings and that Bayer should have been granted the possibility to comment on the protective letter that formed the basis of the rejection of the ex-parte injunction.
Bayer was represented in this matter by Simon Holzer, MLL Legal’s head of technical IP, Louisa Galbraith, attorney-at-law, Matthias Leemann, attorney-at-law, and Ulrike Ciesla, European patent attorney.