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Federal Circuit affirms In re Kubin and puts sensible limits on Biotechnology Patents pursuant to the KSR obviousness standard, thus negating Deuel

By Andis Kaulins

We posted previously, extensively and definitey about the need to limit biotechnology patents at In re Kubin : Hitting the NAIL on the Head : Sequencing Poor Federal Circuit Court Decisions out of the Biotechnology Patent Genome via KSR and/or Bilski Reasoning.

Through Filewrapper we just became aware of the the fact that the Federal Circuit decided this landmark biotechnology case just last Friday, applying the obviousness standard in KSR to biotechnology cases and in so doing finding that Deuel in this regard is no longer good law. BRAVO to the Federal Circuit in properly applying the U.S. Supreme Court's KSR standard.

Read the full posting Kubin decided: Federal Circuit provides guidance for application of KSR in biotechnology at Filewrapper, which provides excellent links to most if not all of the necessary resources - something we ourselves always try to do in our often lengthy postings, but which most blogs in their superficiality never do.

Well done, Filewrapper team!

By contrast, Patent Docs, pushing their particular subjective and outdated view of biotechnology patents, still doesn't get it, assigning multiple errors to the Federal Circuit court rather than trying to formulate a workable understanding of the rule now applied in In re Kubin and applicable to the grant or denial of all biotechnology patents in the future. When Patent Docs writes that "the Court set forth a plethora of factual grounds unlikely to be identically (or even substantially) encountered for other genes," they are engaging in wishful nostalgic thinking which has no bearing on the current and modernized patent realities.

The fact is that biotechnology patents will be more difficult to obtain because of In re Kubin, make no mistake about that, and thank goodness for that, for the sake of the health of the patent industry as a whole and for the sake of the health of the entire legal system.

Full post as published by LawPundit on April 07, 2009 (boomark / email).