China-based Harbour BioMed (HKEX: 02142) has secured a unanimous jury verdict in the US District Court for the District of Delaware against Amgen (Nasdaq: AMGN) and its subsidiary Teneobio, with the jury finding infringement of Harbour’s Grosveld Patent, confirming the patent’s validity, and awarding USD 20.2 million in damages. The ruling is notable because it concerns a platform-level transgenic antibody discovery patent rather than a product-specific therapeutic patent, reinforcing the enforceability of intellectual property covering antibody generation technologies.
The Grosveld Patent protects Harbour BioMed’s Harbour Mice platform, a transgenic rodent system used to generate fully human antibodies, including heavy chain-only antibodies. Unlike patents directed to individual drug candidates or therapeutic indications, the asserted claims cover the underlying discovery methodology itself. As a result, the patent’s scope potentially extends across multiple antibody programs generated using the protected technology rather than a single commercial product. The jury’s validity finding strengthens Harbour BioMed’s position in asserting those claims against downstream users of the platform.
Under US patent law, a willfulness finding permits the patent holder to seek enhanced damages of up to three times the jury award. Whether the court exercises that discretion remains to be determined, but the verdict strengthens Harbour BioMed’s position in any future licensing or enforcement discussions involving the asserted patent. Prior to trial, the court issued a ruling that prompted Harbour BioMed to narrow its immediate trial strategy, focusing on a single patent while preparing an appeal to the US Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit on a second patent. Harbour BioMed has stated that a second patent currently being prepared for Federal Circuit appeal could carry substantially greater financial implications than those addressed in the current verdict, although the company has not disclosed the relevant claims or timeline for proceedings.