Overview
(November 24, 2025, Washington, DC) – Steptoe LLP has achieved a significant appellate victory for client Sandoz Inc., overturning a $39 MM jury verdict in a high-stakes patent infringement dispute concerning its generic version of Latisse®, a drug product for eyelash growth. The US Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit reversed and held that the asserted patent claim at issue was invalid for lack of adequate written description.
The case, Duke University v. Sandoz Inc., Nos. 24-1078 (Fed. Cir.) and 18-cv-997 (D. Colo.), involved several issues of patent validity, including under 35 USC. § 112(a). Plaintiffs Duke University and Allergan Sales, LLC (now part of AbbVie) asserted that Sandoz's generic product infringed claim 30 of infringed US Patent No. 9,579,270. Sandoz challenged the validity of the claim on several grounds. After a five-day jury trial, the district court entered judgment for Allergan, awarding $39 million in damages. This judgment was reversed on appeal as discussed below.
On appeal, Steptoe and co-counsel Goodwin Procter LLP successfully argued that the patent specification failed to provide sufficient "blaze marks" or structural commonalities to demonstrate possession of the claimed invention. The Federal Circuit agreed and reversed the judgment, concluding that "this is a case in which the appellant has overcome the doubly high burden of persuading us to overturn a jury verdict of no invalidity" because “no reasonable factfinder" could find adequate written description.
This marks the fourth consecutive win for Sandoz in litigation brought by Duke and Allergan over its Latisse® generic product, underscoring Steptoe's strength in complex pharmaceutical patent disputes.
The Steptoe team included: Vishal Gupta, Kate Tellez, Robert Kappers, Tyler Doh, Lillian Wallace, Candice Kwark, Jenn Fryer, and Anthony DiFilippi. We were pleased to partner with Goodwin Procter LLP on this matter.
About Steptoe
In more than 110 years of practice, Steptoe has earned an international reputation for vigorous representation of clients before governmental agencies, successful advocacy in litigation and arbitration, and creative and practical advice in structuring business transactions. Steptoe has more than 500 lawyers and other professional staff across offices in Beijing, Brussels, Chicago, Hong Kong, Houston, London, Los Angeles, New York, San Francisco, and Washington, DC. For more information, visit www.steptoe.com.
