AstraZeneca AB & Anor v Hansoh Pharmaceutical Group Company Limited & Ors

Facts

AstraZeneca AB and AstraZeneca UK Limited brought a patent infringement claim in the Patents Court against four companies: Hansoh Pharmaceutical Group Company Limited, Jiangsu Hansoh Pharmaceutical Group Co., Limited, SFL Pharmaceuticals Deutschland GmbH and Manufacturing Packaging Farmaca (MPF) B.V. The patents in suit include the '895 patent, whose claim 1 is a product per se claim; there are also purpose-limited or use-limited claims. Infringement is alleged under the doctrine of equivalents. At a case management conference before Meade J, two contested matters arose. First, the defendants applied to amend their pleading to advance what the judge called a radical point: that a product per se claim can be infringed by equivalence only if the respective products have materially the same properties in all respects for all purposes. Their counsel accepted that a patentee could never meet that burden. AstraZeneca opposed the amendment on the basis that it had no prospect of success. Second, a dispute about whether the defendants had intended to make their product equivalent to AstraZeneca's had led to correspondence and a limited admission. AstraZeneca sought extended disclosure across very wide categories, including laboratory notebooks and documents filed with the regulatory agency. The defendants preferred to provide a PPD, for which a date had been proposed.