Sov­er­eign non­sense: Patent board joins the line­up of crit­ics diss­ing Al­ler­gan's 'il­lu­so­ry' IP deal with the Mo­hawks

Al­ler­gan’s $AGN at­tempt to make an end run around an in­ter partes re­view of its patents for its block­buster Resta­sis fran­chise has been dissed by a fed­er­al judge, ridiculed by a US Sen­a­tor and now tossed out by the Patent Tri­al and Ap­peal Board.

Hand­ing over the patents to a Mo­hawk tribe, which then de­clared that IPR could not ap­ply to a group with sov­er­eign im­mu­ni­ty, swift­ly boiled up in­to a con­tro­ver­sy in which Al­ler­gan’s Brent Saun­ders stout­ly de­fend­ed the le­git­i­ma­cy of the deal. And Al­ler­gan hand­ed over close to $14 mil­lion in cash to get it rolling, with quar­ter­ly pay­ments to­tal­ing $15 mil­lion a year to keep it go­ing.

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