The Patent Trial and Appeal Board (PTAB) granted a victory to Incyte Corp in a final inter partes review (IPR) decision, ruling that a Concert Pharmaceuticals Inc. patent related to a potential hair loss treatment was unpatentable. "Having considered the record before us, we determine that petitioner has shown by a preponderance of the evidence that [the patent's claims] are unpatentable," the board said in its decision. Concert claimed that CTP-543, a drug candidate being evaluated as a treatment for a hair loss condition called alopecia areata, was discovered using the company’s technology to modify ruxolitinib. Jakafi, a medication marketed by Incyte to treat polycythemia vera and certain types of myelofibrosis, contains ruxolitinib as the active ingredient.
Finnegan filed the IPR petition with the PTAB in April 2017 on behalf of Incyte. The board originally decided not to review the patent but reversed its decision, saying it had applied an overly restrictive standard in its first analysis and made a mistake during the so-called lead compound analysis, a framework used to review whether pharmaceutical compounds are invalid as obvious.
In the same decision, the PTAB denied Concert's request to amend parts of the patent."[W]e agree with petitioner that the motion to amend does not set forth how the proposed substitute claims respond to the asserted grounds of unpatentability," the board said.
