Ju­ry finds Gilead li­able for $585M and big roy­al­ties in Kite CAR-T patent case

A Kite deal that’s al­ready be­come a bur­den on Gilead’s back just got heav­ier as a Cal­i­for­nia ju­ry has ruled Gilead must pay Bris­tol-My­ers Squibb and Sloan Ket­ter­ing $585 mil­lion plus a 27.6% roy­al­ty for patent in­fringe­ment com­mit­ted by its sub­sidiary: about $752 mil­lion in to­tal.  The rul­ing is al­most cer­tain to be ap­pealed.

Kite Phar­ma — found­ed by Arie Bellde­grun, now fo­cused on a next-gen CAR-T com­pa­ny — has been fac­ing a law­suit since the day its first CAR–T ther­a­py won ap­proval in Oc­to­ber, 2017. Juno Ther­a­peu­tics and Sloan Ket­ter­ing filed a com­plaint say­ing Kite had copied its tech­nol­o­gy. Gilead ac­quired Kite in June of that year for $11.9 bil­lion.  Juno was ac­quired the fol­low­ing year by Cel­gene for $9 bil­lion, be­fore Cel­gene was ac­quired by Bris­tol-My­ers Squibb in 2019.

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