ITC Investigation Bureau "Permanent Import Ban on Nabota"... Daewoong "Repeats Previous Claims"

[Asia Economy Reporter Cho Hyun-ui] Regarding the dispute over the botulinum toxin strain between Medytox and Daewoong Pharmaceutical, the U.S. International Trade Commission (ITC) Office of Unfair Import Investigations (OUII) stated its opposition to Daewoong Pharmaceutical's petition. In response, Daewoong Pharmaceutical said, "The ITC staff attorney merely repeated previous claims without any new grounds."

A Daewoong Pharmaceutical official questioned on the 26th, "What meaning does the repetition of the ITC staff attorney's opinion have when the commission has decided to fully review the preliminary determination due to our objection to its errors?"

OUII is an independent agency under the ITC that represents the public interest and provides opinions on litigation matters. According to industry sources, OUII submitted an official opinion to the tribunal opposing Daewoong Pharmaceutical's petition against the ITC's preliminary determination.

Earlier, the ITC issued a preliminary determination in July favoring Medytox but began a review after Daewoong Pharmaceutical filed an objection. OUII then submitted another opinion rebutting Daewoong Pharmaceutical's position.

Daewoong Pharmaceutical stated, "The ITC decided to conduct a full review because the preliminary determination was made based on the biased opinion of an ITC staff attorney who unilaterally supported only the plaintiff's claims," adding, "OUII's opinion is not new news at all."

In its opinion, OUII said, "The difficulty in finding a commercially viable botulinum strain was the reason Daewoong Pharmaceutical had no choice but to steal Medytox's strain." It also argued that if a final ruling of trade secret infringement is issued against Daewoong Pharmaceutical, the product import ban should be indefinite rather than the 10-year ban stated in the preliminary determination.

Regarding this, a Daewoong Pharmaceutical official told Asia Economy in a phone interview, "The OUII's assumption that it was difficult to obtain the strain itself is incorrect," and explained, "We have already purchased a new strain and submitted it to the ITC to refute this."