On September 26, 2024, an international arbitration tribunal delivered a unanimous award in favor of Wilson Sonsini’s client, Aadi Bioscience, Inc., and decisively rejected the claimant’s multimillion-dollar demand for damages.

Aadi is an innovative California biotechnology company that researches, develops, and commercializes cancer drugs using a revolutionary nanoparticle albumin-bound delivery system. Aadi’s flagship product—ABI-009 (trade name FYARRO)—is FDA approved to treat patients with perivascular epithelioid cell tumors (PEComa), a rare and aggressive form of cancer.

In December 2020, Aadi entered a licensing agreement with a Chinese company for the development and commercialization of ABI-009 in China. When the parties experienced delays related to a third-party drug manufacturer, the Chinese licensee terminated the agreement and sued Aadi for breach of contract, claiming more than $341 million in compensatory damages and lost profits. 

Following an international arbitration trial under the auspices of the ICC International Court of Arbitration held in December 2023, the arbitral tribunal issued a unanimous award finding that Aadi did not breach the parties’ license agreement and rejecting all the claimant’s demands for relief. The tribunal adopted the contractual interpretation arguments advanced by Wilson Sonsini on behalf of Aadi and found that Aadi had exercised commercially reasonable efforts to provide its licensee with relevant manufacturing information.

The Wilson Sonsini litigation team representing Aadi in the matter included partners Dylan J. Liddiard and Matthew Macdonald; associates Josh Craddock, Eric T. Kohan, Mikaela Burkhardt, Nick Guenther, and Lizette Valles; and paralegal Deborah Bellinger.