Takeaway: Recent Supreme Court decision upheld that a patent covering a class of processes must provide enough information to allow a skilled individual to replicate the invention(s).

The U.S. Supreme Court has ruled in favor of Sanofi and Regeneron Pharmaceuticals in a patent dispute over antibody patents. The court unanimously decided that a patent covering a class of processes must provide enough information for skilled individuals to replicate the entire scope of the invention. The court emphasized that patents must enable skilled people to make and use the entirety of the claimed invention(s), allowing for a reasonable amount of experimentation but not detracting from the basic requirement that skilled individuals must be able to make and use the invention(s).

The case involved Amgen’s attempt to revive patents for its cholesterol drug, Repatha, which were invalidated by Sanofi and Regeneron. The Supreme Court’s decision upholds the lower court’s ruling that Amgen had failed to enable all that it had claimed in its patents for a specific genus of antibodies. Amgen argued that it had provided sufficient examples, while Sanofi and Regeneron contended that Amgen’s broad standard allowed it to patent more than it had actually discovered.