Medytox and Daewoong Pharmaceutical continued to brawl over the U.S. International Trade Commission's (ITC) ruling that favored Medytox's complaint about Daewoong allegedly stealing its trade secrets to develop Nabota, the latter's botulinum toxin (BTX) product.
After the U.S. trade agency's decision, the two companies have wasted no time issuing statements that interpreted the ruling in their respective favor.
Most recently, Daewoong said that the ITC committed an unprecedented error by judging Daewoong's BTX strain theft incidence with only inference based on Medytox's claims in its recent preliminary decisions.
"After analyzing the ITC's decision, this company has confirmed several errors," Daewoong said. "We will prevail in the final decision in November by presenting the proof of the misjudgment."
The ITC administrative judge also admitted that he did not confirm any detectable acts of theft in the “final initial determination,” or ID, the company added.
Daewoong stressed that such a statement shows that there is no evidence that the former Medytox employee used the trade secret of Medytox for Daewoong as well as when and how the strain was stolen from Medytox.
"Despite such remarks, in making his ruling, the administrative judge cited Meditox's one-sided claims that the genes of the two manufacturers' strains are relatively similar and that the possibility of Daewoong’s strain harvested from the soil seems to be low," Daewoong said. "The judge said that by using this information, the ITC could 'deduce' that Daewoong could have stolen the trade secrets with only a probability of over 51 percent."
It is an obvious misjudgment that the use of trade secrets has been decided with only inference and without any clear evidence, the company added.
Daewoong also criticized the judge in making such a decision.
"The ITC judge sided with Allergan to protect the U.S. industry and made an unfair and biased decision far from the real truth," the company said. "We will fight to the end through clear proof of facts based on statutes and win in the end."
In rebuttal, Medytox said that the ITC administrative judge had not accepted all the claims that Daewoong made.
"Also, the full record of the ITC’s final initial determination, which Daewoong claims that it reviewed on July 13, is kept confidential for 30 days after the ruling," Medytox said. "Therefore, Daewoong is either making false claims without seeing the records or is in clear violation of the ITC's regulations."
Medytox has long argued that it is necessary to disclose the DNA analysis results of both strains to the ITC. In contrast, Daewoong has made various efforts to prevent the analysis results' disclosure, the company added.
"While Daewoong tried to belittle DNA analysis's credibility, the ITC judge did not accept results of the analysis submitted by experts from Daewoong after a detailed review," Medytox said. "In the final initial determination, the ITC judge concluded that the result of DNA analysis shows that Daewoong's strain was derived from the strain of Medytox and is evidence of the alleged theft."
The company also criticized the sudden change in Daewoong's stance toward the ITC.
"Daewoong had insisted that it would win the preliminary ruling," Medytox said. "After the ITC did not rule in their favor, however, they started accusing the ITC's ruling as a serious error."
Daewoong will no longer be able to make excuses when the full record of ITC's final initial determination is disclosed to the public after 30 days of the decision, the company added.