Interesting view from Morphosys on the CAT decision (I'm not sure how much weight I'd give to the authority of "an independent patent attourney"....I suspect this one will have some way to run) -
Germany, July 4 /PRNewswire/ -- MorphoSys AG, the Munich-based biotechnology company, today confirmed its ability to continue to develop and apply its proprietary HuCAL technology. The announcement is in response to yesterday's decision by the Opposition Division of the European Patent Office to uphold the main claims of patent EP 589 877 (McCafferty) held by Cambridge Antibody Technology Ltd. The McCafferty patent relates to a specific method of screening scFv (single chain) antibody libraries. MorphoSys' HuCAL-Fab library, launched in January this year, is not subject to the present case. With the recently acquired license under Genentech patents relating to phage display screening, MorphoSys has all licenses required to practise its HuCAL-technologies.<br>
``This decision by the EPO will have no effect on our ability to continue to commercialise our proprietary HuCAL scFv technology,'' commented Dr. Thomas von Rueden, Chief Scientific Officer, MorphoSys AG. ``It is our view, which has been confirmed by an independent patent attorney, that the technology we use to screen our single chain libraries does not fall within the scope of the McCafferty patent claims.''<br>
MorphoSys develops and applies innovative technologies for the production of synthetic antibodies, which accelerate drug discovery and target characterisation. Founded in 1992, the Company's proprietary Human Combinatorial Antibody Library (HuCAL) technology is used by researchers world-wide for human antibody generation. The Company currently has licensing and research collaborations with DuPont Pharmaceuticals (Wilmington, Delaware), Millennium Pharmaceuticals Inc., (Cambridge, Mass), Chiron Corporation (Emeryville, California), GPC Biotech (Munich, Germany), Bayer (Berkeley, California), ProChon (Revohot, Israel), and EOS Biotechnology (South San Francisco, California).<br>
Statements included in this press release which are not historical in nature are intended to be, and are hereby identified as, ``forward-looking statements'.... |
