Amgen has announced that the District Court in Boston has upheld  the
court rulings regarding the infringement, validity and enforceability of 10 claims of four of Amgen’s erythropoietin (EPO) patents.

The district court also ruled that Amgen is entitled to a permanent injunction prohibiting Roche from selling its pegylated-erythropoietin (peg-EPO) product MIRCERA in the U.SA.

Previously, the Court gave a preliminary injunction preventing Roche from selling peg-EPO, which Roche had appealed.  The latest decision provides a permanent injunction once the appeal of the preliminary injunction is resolved.
The Court stated: “Failure to enter a permanent injunction…would risk undermining the incentives for innovation that have produced, and hopefully will continue to produce, medical advances that extend and enhance the value of life. The Court  therefore concludes that the public interest will not be disserved by a permanent injunction.”

 In a separate decision involving Amgen’s suit against TKT and Aventis, the District Court upheld the validity of claim 1 of Amgen’s U.S. Patent No. 5,955,422 that claims pharmaceutical compositions of human EPO and entered a permanent injunction  prohibiting TKT and Aventis from selling its gene-activated EPO in the U.S.

Amgen discovers, develops, manufactures and delivers innovative human therapeutics. A biotechnology pioneer since 1980, Amgen was one of the first companies to realize the new science’s promise by bringing safe and effective medicines from lab, to manufacturing
plant, to patient. Amgen therapeutics have changed the practice of medicine, helping millions of people around the world in the fight against cancer, kidney disease, rheumatoid arthritis and other serious illnesses.

After a New Zealand’s Fonterra spokesperson stated that none of the batch in question was exported out of China, it appears that there are very real fears that quite large tonnages of the contaminated milk powder have been exported to other countries from their China subsidiary.

Possibly in an effort to reduce the impact, the Fonterra website shows an article that states “All other ANMUM and ANLENE products in the market have been produced using only 100% fully imported milk from New Zealand and are free from any possibility of contamination with melamine from locally sourced milk, and adhere to the strictest New Zealand and international standards”.

However it has now been reported in the China Post that ” One thousand 25-kg bags, or 25 tons, of the milk powder contaminated with melamine was imported into Taiwan in late June by New Tai Milk Products, a branch of the New Zealand-based dairy ingredients company Fonterra.

 The Taiwan Department of Health Bureau of Food Safety, believe that most of the contaminated milk powder that has been sold, went to food processing factories, so could be containating a wide range of food products.

 In moves to get to the bottom of the problem the Chinese government has now said that tests on products from all 109 baby milk companies in China showed varying traces of melamine from 22 companies, and that milk collectors, who gather milk from dairy farmers, deliberately added melamine to make it appear the milk had more protein.

A Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesperson has also stated that multiple other countries including Yemen, Bangladesh, Burma, Gabon and Burundi have imported milk powder made in China firms which has since been found to be contaminated.

The EU has moved to ban imports of dairy-based food products from China, including sweets biscuits and chocolate, aimed at children or infants amid  the escalating global health scare.