Patent Law

Cells Unstemed

By Gary Odom and Jordan Kuhn

WARF is a patent holding company for the University of Wisconsin scientific community. Three WARF stem cell patents that had validity aspersions cast by "public interest" busybody Dan Ravicher of PUBPAT have survived USPTO reexamination, albeit with some amendment.

Dr. James Thomson's work in the late 1990s with culturing embryonic stem cells led to 5,843,780; 6,200,806; and 7,029,913.

Ravicher, refusing to eat crow: "I don't think this is a clear-cut victory for either side. Confronted by our challenge, early last year WARF substantially eased its licensing requirements." Ravicher swore appeal, at least on the 913. The PTO examiner had found Ravicher's arguments for invalidity "flawed by hindsight reasoning."

Carl Gulbrandsen, managing director of WARF: "The patent office has conducted a thoughtful and thorough review of all three patents, and we applaud this final decision." Gulbrandsen characterized the claim amendments as "clarifcation."

Full post as published by The Patent Prospector on March 11, 2008 (boomark / email).