Company: ABUS
Filing Date: 2025-03-27
Form Type: 10-K
Source: 0001447028-25-000083
Chunk: 86

Company: Arbutus Biopharma Corp
Filing Date: 2025-03-27
Form: 10-K
Item: Item 3
Chunk 86
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, without which their COVID-19 mRNA-LNP vaccines would not have been successful. On July 10, 2023, Pfizer and BioNTech filed their answer to the complaint, affirmative defenses and counterclaims. We and Genevant filed our answer to these counterclaims on August 14, 2023. A scheduling conference was held on August 28, 2023 and the court issued a Letter Order on September 7, 2023 setting certain court dates. The claim construction hearing occurred in December 2024. The court is expected to provide its ruling on the claim construction and issue a further scheduling order, including the date for trial, in 2025.  Fact discovery in the action is ongoing.

Moderna Inter Partes Review Petition

On February 21, 2018, Moderna Therapeutics, Inc. (Moderna) filed a petition requesting the United States Patent and Trademark Office to institute an Inter Partes Review of Arbutus United States Patent 9,404,127 (the ’127 Patent). In its petition, Moderna sought to invalidate all claims of the patent based on Moderna’s allegation that the claims are anticipated and/or obvious. We filed a response to Moderna’s petition on June 14, 2018. On September 12, 2018, the Patent Trial and Appeal Board (the PTAB) rendered its decision to institute Inter Partes Review of the ‘127 Patent. The ‘127 Patent represents only a fraction of our extensive LNP patent portfolio.

With respect to the ‘127 Patent, the PTAB held all claims as invalid on September 10, 2019, by reason of anticipatory prior art. However, this decision was vacated and sent back (remanded) to the PTAB for a rehearing, pending the U.S. Supreme Court’s (Supreme Court) decision whether to grant certiorari in a different case, United States v. Athrex, Inc. (US v. Athrex), the holding of which could impact the findings in the ‘127 Patent matter. The Supreme Court granted certiorari in US v. Athrex on October 13, 2020 (i.e., agreed to review the decision appealed from a lower court). Until the Supreme Court rendered its opinion in US v. Athrex, the ‘127 Patent hearing remained in abeyance, with no decision reached as to the validity of its claims. The Supreme Court decided on the US v. Athrex case on June