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AbbVie and Genmab: Can a legal battle break a billion-dollar bond?
Newsletter Signup - Under Article / In Page"*" indicates required fieldsSubscribe to our newsletter to get the latest biotech news!By clicking this I agree to receive Labiotech's newsletter and understand that my personal data will be processed according to the Privacy Policy.*Business email* CommentsThis field is for validation purposes and should be left unchanged. What happens when biotech partners end up on opposite sides of a courtroom? That’s the question now looming over AbbVie and Genmab, two biotech heavyweights whose billion-dollar collaboration helped bring the cancer drug epcoritamab to market.Indeed, AbbVie has filed a lawsuit in a U.S. district court accusing Genmab — and its recently acquired company, ProfoundBio — of misappropriating confidential technology related to antibody-drug conjugates (ADCs). Genmab has rejected the claims and said it will defend itself, insisting the dispute will not impact its ongoing collaborations with AbbVie. But it’s fair to ask whether this could be the beginning of the end — or just a bump in the road for this alliance in cancer drug development.Table of contentsA history of collaborationFor nearly five years, AbbVie and Genmab have been more than just occasional partners — they’ve co-developed a successful antibody program in oncology. The collaboration centers on the flagship epcoritamab, a bispecific antibody that redirects T cells to kill B-cell cancer cells. The drug has received accelerated FDA approval for diffuse large B-cell lymphoma (DLBCL) in 2023 and expanded approval to include follicular lymphoma in 2024. While it is facing significant competition, epcoritamab has the potential to become an essential treatment for a broad range of blood cancers.This partnership, which started in 2020, wasn’t a small-scale co-development deal. AbbVie paid Genmab $750 million upfront, with the total value of the agreement potentially reaching $3.15 billion. The companies agreed to co-commercialize epcoritamab in the U.S. and Japan, while AbbVie would handle commercialization in the rest of the world — both sides betting big on shared success.But epcoritamab was only the beginning. The 2020 deal also included a pipeline of other antibody programs, including DuoHexaBody-CD37 and DuoBody-CD3x5T4, both developed using Genmab’s proprietary bispecific technology. The two companies committed to co-developing up to seven antibody-based therapies.At the time, Genmab’s CEO, Jan van de Winkel, called the alliance a “transformative collaboration” allowing Genmab to “accelerate, broaden, and maximize the development of some of its promising early-stage bispecific antibodies.” It was widely seen as a high-profile pairing — a dynamic European innovator teaming up with a big U.S. pharma looking to expand its cancer pipeline.But we wouldn’t be talking about it if the partnership were still running smoothly. Indeed, AbbVie is suing its partner Genmab, accusing it of stealing intellectual property — more precisely, of unauthorized use of confidential know-how.The legal dispute between AbbVie and GenmabIn March 2025, AbbVie initiated legal proceedings against Genmab, alleging the misappropriation of trade secrets related to ADC technology. The lawsuit centers on the use of disaccharides to enhance the hydrophilicity of drug-linkers in ADCs — a technique AbbVie claims is proprietary. This technology is utilized in rinatabart sesutecan (Rina-S), an ADC developed by ProfoundBio, which Genmab acquired in May 2024. The ADC is currently in phase 3 for ovarian cancer and other solid tumors.Suggested Articles Amryt Makes Nasdaq Debut to Fund Rare Disease Treatments Viridian reports positive news from ongoing trial for patients with Thyroid Eye Disease Gene therapy and chemotherapy could be new osteosarcoma treatment option Spanish company launches to produce melanin from enzymes eureKARE launches synthetic biology studio network AbbVie contends that former employees, now with ProfoundBio, illicitly utilized its trade secrets to advance Rina-S and other pipeline products. The lawsuit seeks damages and broad injunctive relief but does not go as far as asserting patent infringement. Genmab has categorically refuted these allegations and manifested its intent to defend against the claims. According to Genmab, AbbVie has never pursued the development of products using the alleged trade secrets — nor sought to protect them through patents. In Genmab’s view, this raises questions about whether AbbVie is now trying to assert control over innovations it neither commercialized nor legally secured. The company also highlights that this lawsuit is among several recent actions by AbbVie against competitors, alleging trade secret misappropriation by former AbbVie employees. And it is true this legal action is not an isolated incident. In September 2024, AbbVie sued BeiGene, alleging that a former senior scientist misappropriated confidential information regarding AbbVie’s BTK degrader to develop a competing cancer therapy. AbbVie claimed that BeiGene encouraged the scientists to divulge these secrets to accelerate their BTK degrader program.Furthermore, AbbVie has previously pursued legal action against Alvotech, alleging trade secret misappropriation related to the development of a biosimilar to AbbVie’s arthritis treatment, Humira. The case was dismissed due to jurisdictional issues, but it does point to a pattern of AbbVie actively protecting its intellectual property through litigation. Will the lawsuit against Genmab share the same fate? Let’s leave that to the Court of the Western District of Washington to decide.What’s at stake: Could this jeopardize the partnership?So far, both companies have been clear: the lawsuit will not affect their work on epcoritamab, the bispecific antibody they co-developed and are now co-commercializing. But while the program may be untouched for now, trust is harder to measure, and harder to rebuild.What makes this situation unusual is that the lawsuit arrives while the collaboration is still ongoing. In most cases, litigation tends to follow a breakdown, not spark one. That’s what happened in the dispute between Johnson & Johnson (J&J) and ChemImage, which arose only after J&J terminated their contract. Here, the courtroom battle unfolds while the multi-billion-dollar oncology alliance is still very much alive.Similar cases in the industry have shown different outcomes. Insulet’s 2024 lawsuit against EOFlow over insulin pump technology ended with a $452 million damages award. Pfizer, meanwhile, settled its 2023 trade secrets dispute with Regor Therapeutics behind closed doors. In this case, Genmab has strong reasons to defend Rina-S, a potential blockbuster ADC now in phase 3. AbbVie, for its part, has equally strong reasons to keep epcoritamab on track. Still, the lawsuit adds undeniable strain. It puts the companies’ interests directly against one another: Rina-S is a Genmab-only asset but could end up competing with AbbVie’s Elahere in ovarian cancer while both have interests in maintaining smooth operations regarding epcoritamab.It’s not only about seeing how the legal dispute will play out but also how it will impact the collaboration’s dynamics. 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