21 August 2019 - Gilead Sciences took the unusual step of mounting a challenge to U.S. government patents on Wednesday, saying the government’s claim to have invented the use of the drug Truvada for HIV prevention is invalid.

The pharmaceutical company filed a petition with the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office, asking for a reexamination of the government’s patents. Gilead says medical professionals were widely discussing Truvada, approved in 2004 for treating people already infected with HIV, for prevention of the disease before the government filed its patent claim in 2006.

“That was already known in the public domain, and you can’t take that back,’’ Gilead patent lawyer Patricia Thayer said in an interview Wednesday. Gilead’s filing included reams of documents the company says prove that the concept of using Truvada for prevention was widely known several years before the government’s application.

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