Integra Life Sciences Corp., Asahi Glass Co., The Burnham Institute, Merck, SmithKline regulatory update

The Board of Patent Appeals and Interferences of the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office ruled that Michael Pierschbacher, senior vice president of R&D at IART, and Burnham Institute President Erkki Ruoslahti, a consultant to the company, were the first to invent cyclized arginine-glycine-aspartic acid (RGD) containing peptides, a family of receptors that are present on the surface of all cells in the body. As a result, the Institute receives all patent rights to RGD containing peptides.

The interference was co-initiated by IART and the Institute in 1992 and involved separate claims of inventorship by Merck, SmithKline and Asahi Glass. ...