The US Supreme Court denied Teva’s petition for certiorari to review the August 2021 decision of the US Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit in relation to skinny label carve-outs and Teva’s US$235M loss in its patent dispute with GSK. The issue that Teva sought to put before the Supreme Court was whether a generic manufacturer of an FDA-approved label which excludes the originator’s patented uses constitutes encouragement of patent infringement by the carved-out uses. According to Teva’s petition, the lower Court held that even though Teva’s skinny label carved out GSK’s sole patented indication for its product Coreg® (carvedilol), Teva could nonetheless be held liable for inducement of patent infringement based on other sections of the label.
Many brief amici curiae were filed, including a brief from 42 professors of law, economics, business and medicine pharmaceutical companies Alvotech and Mylan, the Association for Accessible Medicines and the Solicitor-General of the US (the only party specifically invited to file a brief). The Solicitor-General’s brief quoted the lower court’s dissenting judgment that “the carved-out labelling is more naturally viewed as evidence of the generic manufacturer’s ‘inten[t] not to encourage infringement’” and concluded that the petition for a writ of certiorari should be granted.