>>MARTINSRIED and MUNICH, Germany, Aug. 20 /PRNewswire/ -- MorphoSys AG (Neuer Markt: MOR), the German biotechnology company, announced today that the District Court in Washington, DC issued a preliminary ruling in its favour in the dispute with Cambridge Antibody Technology (CAT) concerning the Griffiths patent (U.S. Patent 5,885,793). The ruling followed a March 2001 trial at which the jury was unable to reach a verdict on the validity of the patent or whether MorphoSys infringed it. The preliminary ruling issued on August 17 states that ``MorphoSys should prevail on the issue of infringement'', pending further briefings or proceedings.
``This is very good news for MorphoSys'', stated Dr. Thomas von Rueden, Chief Scientific Officer, MorphoSys AG. ``This preliminary decision is in line with the MorphoSys view that our proprietary HuCAL® technology is independent and distinct from CAT's''.
In announcing the ruling, the Court focused on the question of whether the MorphoSys HuCAL® antibody libraries are ``derived from humans''. The Court stated that ``no reasonable jury could find that the HuCAL® library, whose starting point is theoretical analysis of data, is ''derived from a human``. A final decision by the court on non-infringement awaits further briefing from the two parties involved. Such a decision would be independent of any ultimate ruling regarding the patent's validity.<<
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Will we shortly see a CATG version also claiming victory? Seems to be the fashion these days.
Cheers, Tuck |
