BioCentury
ARTICLE | Company News

Pfizer, Sanofi pulmonary, autoimmune news

November 18, 2013 8:00 AM UTC

The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit ruled that a patent covering cDNA should be awarded to the party "who first had in hand the actual isolated DNA," regardless of whether the party has correctly sequenced the segment. In 1995, Sanofi submitted a patent application for an isolated DNA polynucleotide encoding the IL-13 binding chain and Pfizer submitted an application for the same isolated DNA in 1996. The U.S. Patent and Trademark Office (PTO) Board of Patent Appeals and Interferences awarded Pfizer the patent because the pharma isolated and identified the desired cDNA before Sanofi. However, Pfizer incorrectly sequenced eight of the 1,143 nucleotides, and Sanofi was the first to correctly sequence the entire segment. In 2012, Sanofi appealed the decision arguing that conception of the claimed cDNA could not occur until the full sequence was determined.

In Sanofi-Aventis v. Pfizer Inc., the appeals court said that a sequence is not the only way to identify the composition of isolated cDNA. The court thus agreed with the PTO, ruling that Pfizer was first to conceive the claimed cDNA when it "selected, isolated and obtained the desired full length polynucleotide and verified that it was the desired product, regardless of whether the fully correct sequencing of the polynucleotide was complete." The question before the court was not patentability of cDNA and thus the court did not consider it. ...