A federal judge in Delaware has ordered AbbVie Inc. to turn over documents related to Boehringer Ingelheim’s defense of unclean hands in a case accusing the German drugmaker of infringing 74 patents with a biosimilar version of AbbVie’s immunosuppressant Humira.
The ruling, from U.S. Magistrate Judge Richard A. Lloret, came in response to Boehringer’s second set of production requests in the 10-month-old suit. Last August, AbbVie accused Boehringer of using dozens of its patents to capitalize on the clinical success of Humira, which has been approved to treat 10 different diseases, including various types of arthritis and Crohn’s disease.
