Photo: Krisztian Bocsi/Bloomberg

A unit of Takeda Pharmaceutical Co. Ltd. has asked a federal judge to toss a $155 million jury verdict last month finding that it had infringed a patent for Bayer AG's hemophilia treatment.

In a court filing Friday, Baxalta Inc. argued that Bayer's patent was invalid and that the German-based pharmaceutical firm had presented no evidence to support the jury's damages award. According to Baxalta, Bayer never disclosed to the public how to make and use the full scope of its claims, and the drug's inventors testified at trial that they did not know how to make a key feature of the drug that was covered by the patent.

“The '520 patent claims cannot, as a matter of law, be so broad so as to encompass what it does not teach and the inventors did not know how to achieve,” Baxalta's attorneys from Haug Partners in New York wrote in a motion for judgment as a matter of law.

Friday's filing came one month after Bayer and its team from Sidley Austin notched their $155 million win in the case, which began when Baxalta was still owned by Irish biopharmacuetical firm Shire.

Bayer had argued that the infringement stemmed from Baxalta's partnership with Nektar Therapeutics, a San Francisco-based company that had briefly done research with Bayer and knew about its patent through previous drug applications and litigation in Germany. According to the complaint, Nektar later partnered with Baxalta to make Adynovate, its flagship hemophilia treatment, and “knew or should have known” that the drug infringed Bayer's patent.

After a five-day trial, the Wilmington jury rejected Baxalta's invalidity defenses and applied a 17.7 percent royalty rate to a base of nearly $873 million in reaching its total damage award.

Baxalta argued in its post-trial motion that the verdict was unwarranted, saying that Bayer had “improperly and repeatedly” asked the jury to speculate on damages, beyond what Baxalta had made in profits from Adynovate. The company also moved for a new trial because, it said, the jury's verdict was “against the clear weight of the evidence.”

Bayer, meanwhile, asked U.S. District Judge Richard G. Andrews of the District of Delaware in a separate filing Friday to tack on another $27 million in supplemental damages, including $8.3 million in pre-judgment interest. A brief accompanying Bayer's motion was not made public on Monday.

As it stands, Japan-based Takeda, which announced its $62 billion purchase of Shire last year, is now on the hook for the verdict.

Attorneys for Bayer and Baxalta were not immediately available to comment.

Bayer was represented by Jim Badke, Sona De, Ching-Lee Fukuda, Caroline Bercier and Julie Hsia of Sidley Austin in New York; Kevin O'Brien, Sue Wang and Saurabh Prabhakar of the firm's San Francisco office; Gwen Hochman Stewart and Grace L.W. St. Vincent in Chicago; and Lauren Cranford Katzeff in Washington, D.C. Rodger D. Smith II and Michael J. Flynn of Morris, Nichols, Arsht & Tunnell acted as Delaware counsel.

Baxalta was represented by Edgar H. Haug, Angus Chen, Porter F. Fleming, Richard F. Kurz and Erika V. Selli of Haug Partners in New York and Frederick L. Cottrell, Kelly E. Farnan and Nicole K. Pedi of Richards, Layton & Finger in Wilmington.

The case is captioned Bayer Healthcare v. Baxalta.