[의학신문·일간보사=김영주 기자]The full text of the final decision of the US International Trade Commission (ITC) was released on the 14th. Daewoong Pharmaceutical published a reference material in the early morning of the 14th and said, “ITC dismissed the claim of Medytox related to the strain by making a final judgment that the strain of Medytox is not a trade secret.” “We will correct all errors by proving that this is an obvious misjudgment in the Federal Court of Appeals.”
ITC,’It is not a strain of trade secret, there is no evidence of theft’
Daewoong Pharmaceutical said, “Meditox attacked competitors as if their strain was the only and special strain in Korea, but trade secrets were completely denied in this ITC decision.” Not only has the botulinum strains been freely shared among researchers from the past, but the ITC has not paid any price for obtaining the strains and has never made any improvements to the strains, so the strains are worthy of protection with the trade secrets of Medytox. To judge that there was no.
In addition, regarding Medytox’s claim that Daewoong stole the strain based on the results of SNP strain analysis, “many experts are refuting this by pointing out limitations and errors in the SNP analysis method, and 16s rRNA differences.” “The ITC decision itself acknowledges that there are limitations to the analysis, and there is no evidence that the strain was stolen, and this is clearly revealed to be due to false speculation.”
It is true that all of the Korean complaints, FDA petitions, and California lawsuits filed by Medytox regarding strain theft have been dismissed. Daewoong Pharmaceutical pointed out, “In this ITC ruling, the allegations related to the same were dismissed, and it was once again confirmed that Medytox’s allegations related to strains were forcibly.
As for the legitimacy of the origin of the strain, Medytox only claims that the former KFDA chief Yang Mo brought the strain from the U.S. upon returning from the U.S. and transferred it to President Hyun-ho Jeong. Daewoong Pharmaceutical claims that it is not possible. Regarding the actual spore formation, the problem of consistency has been revealed, such as changing the original position of being a super strain that cannot be found in nature and forming spores.
Daewoong Pharmaceutical’s’Meditox process’, a general-purpose technology that has been unveiled decades ago
Daewoong Pharmaceutical pointed out in the data that “the process technology that Meditox claimed to be a trade secret is at the same level as in a paper published several decades ago.” It is a level that anyone in the related field can easily make. Medytox’s retirees disclosed that’Meditox copied data from other companies’ standards and test methods and submitted it to the Food and Drug Administration’ through a public interest report.
Daewoong Pharmaceutical argued that “ITC admitted to infringement (meditox technology) simply because some processes were similar and the development period was short.”
It is argued that all processes that ITC viewed as similar have already been published through papers. It is natural that the process technology of botulinum toxin formulation, which has been developed for more than several decades, has some similarities with any company. Daewoong Pharmaceutical responded, “Even though there is a lot of evidence for Daewoong’s own process technology development, it is clear evidence that ITC has come to a biased conclusion that it has not taken this into account.
Daewoong Pharmaceutical said, “In terms of the development period, Medytox, which applied for a patent within 6 months from the establishment of the research center, is much shorter than Daewoong Pharmaceutical, which took 3 years and 2 months to apply for a patent after strain identification. “Meditox in a time when there was no proper research manpower would not have been able to develop the process in such a short period of time had it not stolen someone’s technology.” The ITC’s decision was a compelling conclusion only to protect Allergan’s antitrust activities, and Daewoong Pharmaceutical said that it would fight to the end without succumbing to this unjust ruling.
The US ITC litigation itself raised the issue of unfairness.
Daewoong Pharmaceutical says that the ITC lawsuit is a case dealing with trade secrets of Korean companies, and that it is inappropriate to involve the US administrative agency in the first place. Despite the fact that the company that filed the lawsuit was Meditox, a Korean company, ITC decided that Allergan was the victim and the lawsuit was established by forcibly to protect its own company. In fact, Allergan has never used the trade secrets claimed by Medytox.