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Battling press releases on meaning of re-exam results

By Lawrence B. Ebert, Esq.

NeuralStem responded to a press release by StemCells about a re-examination of two StemCells patents:

Neuralstem, Inc. today responds to an earlier press release by StemCells, Inc. by stating that StemCells, Inc. has completely mischaracterized the meaning of the US Patent and Trademark Office's most recent action.

"First," said Neuralstem President & CEO Richard Garr, "contrary to STEM's statement, the numerous substantial amendments made by STEM to get these two patents allowed completely destroy any basis for their assertions of infringement by Neuralstem.

"Second, I would like to remind everyone that the US Patent and Trademark Office upheld the patentability of Neuralstem's core technology in May, 2006, in response to a challenge from STEM. Our patents are not being challenged in this office action, nor in the suit which STEM brought against us.

"Finally, while we believe that any attempt by STEM to reopen their baseless law suit will be unsuccessful, as we asserted in our original response, Neuralstem does not infringe upon any of their "old" claims, nor do we infringe upon any of the significantly modified claims that they salvaged in the reexamination process."

The patents in question are U.S. Patent Number 5,851,832 and U.S. Patent Number 6,497,872.

See also http://ipbiz.blogspot.com/2008/04/re-exam-of-stemcells-patents.html.

***
One could have written a more brutal analysis of the mis-characterization by John Simpson (then of FTCR) of the significance
of the first Office Action in the re-exam of the Thompson / WARF patents. Simpson (now of the (renamed) Consumer Watchdog) similarly overplayed the significance of a claim amendment after WARF survived the re-exams.

Full post as published by IPBiz on April 16, 2008 (boomark / email).