IPR & Legal

A novel licensing deal among two German universities and the UK Medical Research Council’s commercialization arm is expected to lead to the development of a potential new therapy for rheumatoid arthritis and multiple sclerosis.

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Reform of the patent system in Europe is once more on the political agenda. On 24 March 2009, the European Commission set in motion a procedure that will give it authority to negotiate the creation of a unified patent litigation system for the European Union.

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Bavarian Nordic A/S of Denmark has re-filed a patent infringement suit against Oxford BioMedica Plc in the US District Court for the Southern District of California claiming infringement of Bavarian Nordic’s US patents relating to a viral vector, Oxford BioMedica said.

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Geneart receives European protein patent

Geneart AG has been granted a European patent describing a method for carrying out the selective identification of proteins in vitro. The patent, EP 1913140, underpins the company’s proprietary technology platform relating to the generation and screening of proteins. According to the company, these proteins could become the basis for new therapeutics, vaccines and industrial enzymes. Geneart said its procedure makes it possible to identify optimal variants of a protein from a considerably larger pool more quickly than with conventional methods. This increases the probability of identifying an ideal protein variant such as a strong-binding antibody for a cancer therapy. The European Patent Office granted the patent on 24 December 2008.

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Oxford BioMedica Plc said that a patent infringement suit brought against it by Bavarian Nordic A/S of Denmark has been dismissed. The suit alleged that the UK company had infringed three of Bavarian Nordic’s US patents for a viral vector used in the Danish company’s smallpox, HIV and cancer programmes.

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An appeals body of the European Patent Office has rejected on morality grounds a controversial  stem cell patent application from the Wisconsin Alumni Research Foundation (WARF) relating to a method for obtaining embryonic stem cell cultures from primates.

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A decision by the European Patent Office’s (EPO) Opposition Division to revoke a patent for diagnosing susceptibility to breast and ovarian cancer has been overturned by the EPO’s Technical Board of Appeal. However, the scope of the restored patent held by Myriad Genetics Inc has been reduced.

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The Danish vaccine producer, Bavarian Nordic A/S, has announced a lawsuit against Oxford BioMedica of the UK alleging infringement of three of its US patents for a viral vector used in Bavarian Nordic’s smallpox vaccine.

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A US District Court has permanently enjoined the US Patent and Trademark Office (PTO) from putting into effect new rules that would have limited the number of times an inventor could amend claims in a patent application.

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The European Patent Office (EPO) has started to apply more stringent criteria to the applications it reviews, including those from the medical sciences.

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