Old Power Alley: Vaccines Patent Spats Between Pfizer And Merck... Settled, By Agreement In Delaware

I am almost a week tardy with this, but given the importance of vaccine developments in the law generally, we wanted to note that more and more would-be vaccine patent infringement claims. . . are going to fall into the land of "work it out with a royalty" -- since increasingly, the vaccine arena will be considered "essential medicines" -- globally. [My prior backgrounder, here.]

Here is the Reuters reporting on it -- from five days ago, now:

. . .Merck. . . and Pfizer's Wyeth LLC subsidiary have resolved a patent dispute over their competing vaccines for preventing diseases including pneumonia and meningitis, according to a Delaware court filing.

Kenilworth, N.J.-based Merck had requested a declaratory judgment from the court in January that its Vaxneuvance vaccine for diseases caused by pneumococcus bacteria, which the U.S. Food and Drug Administration approved in July, didn't infringe three patents related to Wyeth's Prevnar vaccines. Merck's complaint said it and New York-based Wyeth had been embroiled in patent proceedings related to the vaccines for over four years in several countries including Australia, Canada, Japan, and the UK. . . .

Onward, ever grinning -- on a flawless Fall Monday morning, in the steel and glass canyons. . . be excellent to one another.

नमस्ते