China’s Supreme People’s Court has sided with the Dutch nutritional ingredients maker DSM in a patent case against the Chinese vitamin maker Anhui Tiger Vitamin.

The dispute centers on the stereoselective synthesis of biotin, also known as vitamin B-7, which DSM makes primarily in Village Neuf, France. The court ordered Tiger, a subsidiary of the Chinese drug and food ingredient firm BBCA Group, to stop all use of the synthetic route in question and pay DSM damages. According to the Dutch company, most biotin is used in animal and human nutrition, with a small amount going into personal care products.

Biotin has three chiral centers and eight stereoisomers, but only one, d-(+)-biotin, is biologically active. DSM’s Chinese patent, CN100447144C, covers the preparation of a set of chiral lactones that can be converted into d-(+)-biotin. As a result of the judgment, Tiger can neither synthesize the lactones nor use them to make biotin.

Without that intermediate, DSM tells C&EN in an email, Tiger “must switch to much more inefficient alternative technologies to introduce chirality, which will severely impact the overall process efficiency.” DSM says it has an analytical method to determine if biotin was made using its patented route.

The ruling exemplifies a recent trend of foreign firms’ winning intellectual property cases in China, says Ryan Smith, a patent attorney at Duane Morris in San Diego. In October, for example, Dow and Johnson Matthey won a trade secret case there against Shanjun Clean Energy Technology concerning a process for making 2-ethylhexanol and other oxo alcohols. 

Smith says the cases underscore the importance of including China when preparing international patent applications, especially when they concern improving the preparation of chemicals that are already commercialized.

Such rulings aside, China has faced criticism from the US, other governments, and international companies for what they characterize as the country’s weak protection of intellectual property. China’s central government, however, has emphasized its desire to attract foreign investment in advance of its upcoming 14th 5-Year Plan, including through stronger patent and trademark enforcement policies.

Source: cen.acs.org

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