Rothwell Figg Achieves Complete PTAB Reversal for Mapi Pharma Patent Application Covering Multiple Sclerosis Therapy

Rothwell Figg represented Mapi Pharma Ltd. before the U.S. Patent Trial and Appeal Board (PTAB) in Appeal 2024-001947 and successfully won reversal of all eight grounds of rejection of the claims of Mapi’s patent application directed to a method of alleviating at least one symptom of relapsing-remitting multiple sclerosis (RRMS) using a Glatiramer Acetate depot, which is designed to be administered as an intramuscular injection just once every four weeks rather than the currently marketed product, which requires injection every day. 

Mapi’s depot drug is in a multinational, multicenter, randomized, Phase III, double blind, parallel group, placebo-controlled study in subjects with Relapsing Forms of Multiple Sclerosis (RMS). And Mapi’s drug is also in a phase IIa study with GA Depot in subjects with Primary Progressive MS, which is a notoriously difficult to treat disease.

The result of the appeal was that the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) granted the application as U.S. Pat. No. 12,370,233 and awarded nearly three years of additional term to the patent due to the USPTO’s delays in erroneously rejecting it.

Rothwell Figg partner Aydin Harston served as counsel for Mapi Pharma.