Anthony M. Insogna

As the partner in charge of Jones Day’s IP practice—a group of over 220 professionals worldwide in 26 offices spanning seven countries—Anthony M. Insogna brings more than 30 years of patent experience to high-stakes litigation.

And he brings the knowledge associated with having been a pre-med student who earned a master’s degree in organic chemistry before law school.

Among his assignments, and representative of his full workload, is his command of a Jones Day team representing pharmaceutical and biotech powerhouse Celgene Corp., the Bristol-Myers Squibb company, in its effort to fend off generic rivals to its top-selling cancer drugs Revlimid and Pomalyst.

“This is a sufficiently big project that there are two firms involved as co-counsel and cases both within and outside the U.S.,” Insogna said. “I’m the field marshal,” he added in describing his work heading the Jones Day lawyers involved in cases brought under the Hatch-Waxman Act’s abbreviated new drug application (ANDA) process.

For Revlimid, seven of the cases were filed in 2021 to enforce more than a dozen patents against 15 different generic drug defendants. For Pomalyst, the team works to enforce nine patents against seven generic defendants.

“Not everyone loves pharma, but we help our clients get their drugs to the market,” Insogna said. “The U.S. has high prices, but we’re the medicine cabinet to the world. Where there’s innovation, there will be patent disputes.”

Additionally, Insogna leads a Jones Day team representing Puma Biotechnology Inc. and its licensor in a Hatch-Waxman patent infringement action against a competitor. The case relates to the defendant’s submission of an abbreviated new drug application to the U.S. Food and Drug Administration seeking approval of a purported generic version of Nerlynx tablets for breast cancer. Puma Biotechnology Inc. et al. v. Sandoz Inc., 1:21-cv-19918 (D. N.J., filed Nov. 10, 2021).

“Puma acquired this breast cancer drug from Pfizer, and now there’s a generic challenger,” Insogna said. “To just take a pill to control breast cancer is quite a big deal.”

In the critical gene-editing Crispr/Cas9 technology field, Insogna leads a Jones Day team representing South Korean biotech company ToolGen Inc. The client focuses on translating the technology in therapeutics and ag-tech. After Insogna’s team successfully appealed a PTAB examiner’s rejection of claims related to a ToolGen patent application, the team obtained a reversal in favor of ToolGen.

In a predecessor case, Insogna’s client prevailed over claims by Nobel Prize winner Emmanuelle Charpentier and several research institutions. The Regents of the University of California v. ToolGen Inc., 106, 127 (PTAB, op. filed Dec. 14, 2020).

“Patent law can be different from the Nobel Prize standards,” Insogna noted. “Legal standards are different from those needed for publishing a paper. Where there’s innovation, there are patent disputes.”

– John Roemer