Brickell research partner sues company for alleged bad faith practices

BOULDER and MIAMI — A Florida pharmaceutical company is suing Boulder-based Brickell Biotech Inc. (Nasdaq: BBI) over a series of alleged bad-faith practices, a suit that Brickell said could hamper milestone payments from a separate funding partner.

The suit, filed in the U.S. District Court of Southern Florida, claims Brickell and Miami-based Bodor Laboratories Inc. signed an agreement in December 2012 to license Bodor’s patents and treatments for excessive sweating. That agreement had several development milestones that Brickell was supposed to reach over seven years, but allegedly failed to do so.

Bodor also claims that a sublicensing agreement between Brickell and Japanese firm Kaken Pharmaceutical Co. in 2015 included some of Bodor’s intellectual property, but Brickell and Kaken secretly amended the agreement without Bodor’s consent. The suit claims Brickell pocketed more than $20 million from Kaken’s milestone payment schedule without giving a cut to Bodor as required.

Brickell also filed a patent application in May with what Bodor claims is its own intellectual property, but allegedly claimed everything in that patent was developed in-house or with Kaken.

Bodor said it only found out about the Kaken changes and the patent application in June, when Brickell’s chief operating officer Andrew Sklawer divulged those details in response to questions about public filings.

Bodor is asking the court to declare the licensing agreement null and void, force Brickell to stop using any of that intellectual property in its research and development and for a $75,000 judgment.

Brickell said in an U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission filing Thursday morning that it views the lawsuit and contract termination as unwarranted, and intends to vigorously defend itself in court. 

However, it acknowledged fighting the suit could pull away management’s attention from day-to-day operations and possibly slow its progress toward reaping up to $25 million in milestone agreements it has with North Carolina-based NovaQuest Capital Management LLC. Brickell inherited that funding agreement when it completed a reverse merger with Vical Inc. in September.

Brickell’s stock closed at $2.89 per share at the end of trading Thursday, a 25.71 percent decline from its starting price.

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