Amgen v. Sanofi

The Federal Circuit has not been kind to patents that claim antibodies by the structure of an antigen/epitope without specifying the antibody structure.  Yesterday, the Fed. Cir. found the jury instructions in Amgen v. Sanofi  that "in the case of a claim to antibodies, the correlation between structure and function may also be satisfied by the disclosure of a newly characterized antigen" to be erroneous since "The essential problem with the jury instruction given in this case is that it effectively permitted the jury to dispense with the required finding of a written description of the invention."  In a previous case, the Fed. Cir. found the term “anti-CD20 antibody” to be limited to the particular epitope on CD20 that Biogen’s antibody bound.  Another Fed. Cir. case found the claim "a neutralizing isolated human antibody, or antigen-binding portion thereof that binds to human IL-12 . . ." to be invalid for written description.  The Federal Circuit’s decisions are in conflict with the USPTO’s written description guidelines that allow claiming an antibody to a specific antigen even if the specification does not disclose a specific antibody that binds to the particular antigen.

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And I was taking a break!

Taking a break

I will be taking a six months break from this blog to focus on starting a blog on cryptocurrency.  I appreciate the many views that I have received so far.  As always, feel free to send me pharma patent work.