By Blake Brittain
(Reuters) – Gilead Sciences (NASDAQ: ) and the U.S. government have settled a $1 billion patent dispute over Gilead’s HIV prevention drugs Truvada and Descovy, according to a filing in federal court in Delaware on Wednesday.
The settlement follows Gilead’s victory in a 2023 jury trial on the government’s patent infringement charges.
Gilead General Counsel Deborah Telman said in a statement that the agreement “allows Gilead to continue to focus its resources on its mission to discover, develop and deliver innovative therapies to people with life-threatening diseases.”
Spokesmen for the US Department of Health and Human Services and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention did not immediately respond to a request for comment and more information about the settlement.
Foster City, Calif.-based Gilead worked with the CDC in the mid-2000s to test whether Gilead’s Truvada could prevent the transmission of HIV, the virus that causes AIDS, in addition to treating it. The federal government said Gilead did not compensate the CDC for discovering that Truvada could prevent HIV infections.
The lawsuit alleged that Gilead “exaggerated” its role in developing the HIV prevention regimen, known as PrEP, or pre-exposure prophylaxis, ignored the CDC’s input and refused to license the CDC’s patents.
The government said in a pretrial filing that it is entitled to up to $691 million in damages from Truvada and $311 million from Gilead’s related drug Descovy. Gilead has earned more than $1.8 billion from US sales of Descovy and Truvada in 2023.
A federal court in Washington, DC, in a separate lawsuit in 2022 found that the government breached research contracts with Gilead by applying for patents without giving the company enough notice.
