ImClone/Sanofi sign $120M Yeda settlement

USA-based drug developer ImClone Systems has signed settlement agreements with Israel's Yeda Research and Development and French drug major Sanofi-Aventis to end patent litigation relating to the anticancer compound Erbitux (cetuximab). Last year, the US District Court in Manhattan ruled in favor of Yeda regarding the inventorship of patents relating to the drug (Marketletter September 25, 2006).

Under the terms of the new deal, ImClone and Sanofi will each pay Yeda $60.0 million and have agreed that the Rehovot-headquartered firm is the sole owner of US patent no 6,217,866 in the USA, with Sanofi as co-owner outside the country.

In addition, ImClone has been granted a worldwide license to technology covered by the patent in return for the payment of low single-digit royalties to Yeda and, on ex-US sales, to both Yeda and Sanofi. The New York-headquartered firm added that the agreement does not change its royalty rate from worldwide Erbitux sales, on which it collaborates with fellow US company Bristol-Myers Squibb and German drugmaker Merck KGaA (Marketletters passim).