CAMBRIDGE, Mass.--(BW HealthWire)--July 2, 2002--Dyax Corp. (Nasdaq: DYAX - News) today announced that the Technical Board of Appeal of the European Patent Office (EPO) affirmed the April 2000 revocation of Dyax's European patent on phage display, European Patent 436,597 (the "'597 patent"), in proceedings brought by Cambridge Antibody Technology and Acambis Research Limited. The EPO Technical Board of Appeal ruled that the patent was not valid on the grounds that it failed to provide verification of the claimed display of a proteinaceous binding domain. This decision by the Board is final and cannot be appealed.
This decision only affects Dyax's `597 patent in Europe and does not impact Dyax's other fundamental patents in the field of phage display technology in the United States, Canada and Israel, as well as additional patent applications in the U.S and Japan. Dyax also has divisional patent applications of the `597 patent now pending in the EPO and intends to vigorously prosecute these applications, taking into consideration this decision.
"Based on our four issued U.S. patents and a Canadian patent, as well as our Japanese and United States applications and our other proprietary technology, we are confident that our intellectual property position in protein and peptide display remains strong," said Henry E. Blair, Dyax's President and Chief Executive Officer. "While we are disappointed with the EPO's decision, the ruling will not affect our ability to move forward using our phage display technology to discover therapeutic candidates, imaging agents, reagents, and separations ligands for Dyax and our collaborators." ... |
