A US appeals court has reversed a two-year-old jury verdict that found Abbott Labs had to pay $1.67 billion to Johnson & Johnson for infringing a patent on the Remicade arthritis treatment. The spat began when J&J’s Centocor Ortho Biotech unit and New York University filed a lawsuit in 2007, alleging Abbott’s rival Humira med infringed a patent relating to antibodies for treating rheumatoid arthritis.

The appeals court, however, decided the Centocor patent was invalid and lacked an adequate written description. The patent “at best, describes a plan for making fully-human antibodies and then identifying those that satisfy the claim limitation,” the court wrote. “But a ‘mere wish or plan’ for obtaining the claimed invention is not sufficient,” adding that the “actual inventive work of producing a human variable region was left for subsequent inventors to complete” (read the ruling).

Two years ago, a federal jury in Texas decided Abbott infringed the patent and awarded Centocor and NYU $1.67 billion in damages and foregone profits. A trial judge later added $175 million in pre-judgment interest, according to reports.