ASTRAZENECA AB v. MYLAN PHARMACEUTICALS INC. [OPINION] (2021-1729, 12/08/2021) (TARANTO, HUGHES, and STOLL)
Stoll, J. The Court vacated a district court judgment of infringement, affirmed the district court’s determination of nonobviousness, and remanded. This is a patent infringement case involving three asserted patents identified by AstraZeneca as covering its “Symbicort® pressurized metered-dose inhaler (pMDI).” The issue of infringement turned on claim construction. The Court explained that the claim construction issue is “whether the concentration of PVP being ‘0.001%’ means 0.001% within one significant figure—encompassing a concentration of PVP in the range of 0.0005% to 0.0014%, as AstraZeneca contends and as the district court construed this term—or it has a narrower meaning in view of the specification and the prosecution history—precisely 0.001% w/w PVP with only ‘minor variations,’ as Mylan contends.” The Court concluded that “Mylan’s proposed construction, albeit articulated differently, is correct because it ‘most naturally aligns with the patent’s description of the invention,’ as further informed by the prosecution history.… We therefore construe ‘0.001%’ as that precise number, with only minor variations, i.e., 0.00095% to 0.00104%.” With respect to the validity issue, the Court concluded that the district court did not clearly err in finding that the prior art taught away from the claimed invention, and that this alone was “sufficient to sustain the nonobviousness determination.”
Judge Taranto dissented in part with respect to the claim construction issue.