Patent Baristas

Acambis, a UK biotechnology company, is fighting a patent-infringement lawsuit that may bar it from a $1.9bn contract to provide smallpox vaccines to the US government. Acambis is bidding for a US Government contract to supply an emergency-use stockpile of MVA. Currently, the company is fighting a three-front battle with Danish vaccine maker Bavarian Nordic, […]

The open source movement, called the Biological Innovation for an Open Society (BIOS), was initiative by molecular geneticist Dr. Richard Jefferson, founder and CEO of the CAMBIA (Centre for the Application of Molecular Biology to International Agriculture) in Canberra. BIOS is an attempt to establish an open-source technology movement in the biotechnology industry, similar to […]

Amgen has filed a complaint for declaratory judgment of patent invalidity and non-infringement in the United States District Court for the District of Delaware (Amgen et al. v. Ariad Pharmaceuticals). Amgen is seeking a declaratory judgment that each of the claims contained in U.S. Patent No. 6,410,516 (‘516 Patent”) covering methods of treating human disease […]

The Human Genome Project, started in started in 1990 to identify genes, has finally come to a close with the publication of the last chromosome sequence in the Human Genome, chromosome 1. It took 150 scientists 10 years to complete the sequence of chromosome 1, which contains nearly twice as many genes as the average […]

A lone blogger may have succeeded in getting Amazon’s 1-Click Patent cut short. The ‘411 patent, assigned to Amazon, is known as the 1-Click Patent for its claim on ordering items on the web by “clicking” just once. Based on material submitted by New Zealander and Lord of the Rings choreographer Peter Calveley, the USPTO […]

The US Supreme Court ruled unanimously that judges do not have to automatically bar companies from using patents that they been shown to have violated. In eBay Inc. et al. v. MercExchange, LLC., a small patent-holding company that won a ruling against the auction site, the Court said judges must use a four-point test to […]

They say the modern biotechnology industry was born 30 years ago this year, with the founding of Genentech in April 1976. Now, in its 20th anniversary edition report called Beyond Borders 2006, Ernst & Young sets out an in-depth analysis and key trends for the biotechnology sector with a timeline charting the industrys evolution. The […]

The European Court of Justice rendered a decision that states drug companies can’t receive patent extensions covering the combination of two substances when only one is an active ingredient and the other controls the release of the first. Drug companies often try to extend patent protection and, under EU rules, drug makers can apply for […]