A US court on Friday has partially accepted and partially denied South Korea’s Daewoong Pharmaceutical’s motion to dismiss the claims brought against them by domestic rival Medytox over the origins of the bacterial strain used to produce botulinum toxin products.

The two Korean drugmakers involved in the case responded Monday with contradicting interpretations of the court decision, continuing a long-running dispute over the source of their anti-wrinkle drugs.

The Superior Court of California in Orange County accepted Daewoong’s motion to dismiss without prejudice Medytox’s claims against it, while denying the motion to dismiss the same claims against Daewoong’s co-defendants Evolus and Alphaeon. 

The ruling came on the grounds that a trial between Medytox and Daewoong is already pending Korea, and that the Korean court now has jurisdiction over the Daewoong defendants.

However, it ruled that the Evolus defendants are not parties to the actions in Korea, and thus are still bound to legal proceedings in California. Thus, a trial between Medytox and Evolus will be held in the US on Aug. 10, as scheduled.

Since 2016, Medytox has claimed that Daewoong stole its BTX strain and related manufacturing secrets to develop its Type A BTX Nabota. Daewoong has strongly denied the allegations, calling them a groundless campaign by Medytox to hurt Daewoong as it expects to win regulatory approval to launch Nabota in the US this year, while Medytox is lagging behind in such efforts.

Medytox took the case to a US court in June 2017, but it was ruled that the case should be settled in Korea, the country where the issue initially emerged.

Therefore, the two companies began another civil lawsuit over the same issues in Korea October 2017, for which hearings are still ongoing.

Daewoong said in a statement Monday that “the current ruling (by the US court) shows that Medytox’s attempts to block the exports of Nabota (Daewoong’s BTX product) have failed.”

Daewoong said that Medytox simply included Evolus, a California-based company, in its lawsuit for the sole purpose of retaining a suit in the US though proceedings are ongoing in Korea.

“The lawsuit in Korea must be settled before the US court can decide to continue with the Medytox vs. Evolus case. If Daewoong wins the case Korea, Medytox will not have any more grounds to continue its lawsuit in the US,” Daewoong said.

On the other hand, Medytox said the US court’s latest decision was “based on a formal judgment of the jurisdiction of the case,” and “shows the court’s intention to rule on the Evolus defendants by conducting thorough hearings on the case.”

It also pointed out that the US court has decided to “dismiss without prejudice” Daewoong’s case, meaning that Medytox is permitted to refile a suit against Daewoong in the US in the future as needed, depending on the outcome of the pending suit in Korea.

Medytox further demanded Daewoong to publicly reveal details about where and how it discovered the BTX bacteria for Nabota, as well as objective evidence including the full DNA sequence of its BTX strain to clear all doubts.

By Sohn Ji-young (jys@heraldcorp.com)