East Texas Jury Awards $41.8 Million in Cancer-Drug Patent Case

A federal jury in Marshall has awarded a Seattle biotechnology company $41.8 million in a patent-infringement lawsuit against Daiichi Sankyo Co. of Japan over a cancer-treatment drug.

At the conclusion of a four-day trial before U.S. Chief Judge Rodney Gilstrap of the Eastern District of Texas, the jury on April 8 rejected Daiichi Sankyo’s challenge to the validity of a patent issued in 2020 to Seagen Inc., formerly known as Seattle Genetics Inc. The patent involves a technology to deliver chemotherapeutic drugs directly to cancer cells – a significant improvement, Seagen claimed in court documents, over earlier, non-targeted drugs that were distributed throughout a patient’s body, “causing significant adverse side effects.”