Total legal services for global blockbuster Entresto®

Lee&Ko has been representing Novartis AG, a global pharma company, in dozens of lawsuits related to its blockbuster heart failure drug Entresto® and advising on various regulatory matters.

Entresto is not only the first standard treatment in 30 years for heart failure, a leading cause of human mortality, but also a blockbuster drug which achieved global sales of $4.64 billion by 2022.

Since the beginning of 2021, dozens of generic companies have filed invalidation actions as well as scope confirmation actions against patents covering Entresto, seeking to bring generic drugs to market sooner. While simultaneous patent litigations are currently pending in the U.S., Europe, India, and other parts of the world, Lee&Ko has been able to successfully defend the patentee in the Korean market for Entresto against infringing generics until now through strategic litigation based on deep expertise which also includes independent discovery of supporting evidence such as data from the Cambridge Structural Database.

As the first case involving a supramolecular compound, the case, requires solving complicated technical issues through evidence interpretation and legal analysis in a completely new technical area.  This will set an important precedent for future cases involving highly technical issues in a completely new technological sector.