Gazette Highlights News 2000

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Week 52:

There may be clues this week to the identity of protein tyrosine KDR kinase inhibitors that Celltech has in preclinical evaluation for cancer. The program was first noted in company...
Iceland seldom features in the Gazette, but this week there is an application claiming serine proteinase inhibitors isolated from cold-adapted organisms...
There are indications that AstraZeneca may be returning to an established class of (thio)chroman and tetrahydronaphthalene derivatives in the search for new neurological agents. Five applications...
Chase Manhattan Bank has never before featured in the Gazette, but a case is included this week relating to an internet-based foreign currency exchange system...
For the record, the total number of PCT applications published during 2000 is just 142 short of the 80,000 mark, or an average of 1536 per week. As luck would have it...

Week 51:

Inter-company links inferred from inventors' addresses may be misleading, most obviously because inventors may move from one employer to another. That was certainly the case last June when applications from Roche...
Clusters of inventions this week characterize the new compound innovation in Section A, with no fewer than 37 cases being grouped, with related work. The companies responsible include 3M...
Two weeks ago we announced here that we would shortly be extending the scope of the Gazette to include what we described as "non-chemical therapies". The broader retrieval strategy...

Week 50:

Shionogi offers a possible clue to the identity of its favored HIV-integrase inhibitor, S-1360, in an application claiming synthesis of propenone derivatives...
Kaneka demonstrates continued interest in statin-type HMG-CoA reductase inhibitors in an application describing synthesis of hydroxyoxopentanoic acid derivatives...
Lilly has applications relating to cryptophycin intermediates and to dibenzosuberanes which may be relevant to a joint multidrug resistance discovery program being undertaken with Elan...
There is a novel ribonucleoside application from the Academy of Sciences of the Czech Republic, a relative newcomer to pharmaceutical patenting, and a screening platform case from Triad Therapeutics...
Collaboration, or at least spin-off, is in evidence in composition cases from Kinetek (associated with the University of British Columbia) and in New Zealand from Genesis R&D...
The Christmas and New Year holiday period is approaching, and Gazette subscribers may find it useful to learn of Current Patents' plans for the next three weeks...

Week 49:

Nereus Pharmaceuticals Inc of San Diego is new to patenting, having been established through venture capital funding raised during the past year. The company has collaborated with the University of California...
Celltek Biotechnologies Inc of Qu?c with claims to hexapeptide based chemokine receptor CCR3 antagonists is also new to patenting...
By chance there is also an application from the homophonic UK-based company Celltech...
Another possible use for squaric acid derivatives, specifically the dibutyl ester SADBE, is in treating alopecia, and that happens to be the field in which there is a series of seven linked cases from P&G...
Subscribers to the Gazette will be pleased to learn that plans are in hand to extend the subject scope somewhat from the beginning of 2001. Already our selection goes considerably beyond the boundaries of conventional therapy based...

Week 48:

SmithKline Beecham's PDE IV inhibitor cilomilast (Ariflo) is the subject of some attention this week with claims to new salts of this cis 4-cyano-4-[3-(cyclopentyloxy)-4-methoxyphenyl]-cyclohexan-1-carboxylate...
Targacept, the former R J Reynolds Tobacco subsidiary, has claims this week to a variety of pharmaceutical compositions comprising aryloxyalkylamines and arylthioalkylamines...
Factor Xa inhibitors are the subject of a notable cluster of no less than nine new applications from COR Therapeutics this week. Probably linked to recent work disclosed...
November 29th, last Wednesday, was the day when the provisions of the American Inventors' Protection Act came into force, but this will not take full effect for at least another 18 months...

Week 47:

Already in its tenth year, EP550696 was finally granted this week to Roche. The subject matter is a thermostable nucleic acid polymerase enzyme from Thermosipho Africanus...
Elsewhere, it would appear that AstraZeneca are revisiting some of their older compounds. An application this week describes a particular enantiomer...
This week also sees two new product cases that describe the first concrete results of well known drug screening and discovery programs have been published. Firstly, a joint application of Medivir and Peptimmune...
The other comes from San Diego-based Neurocrine Biosciences, disclosing novel small molecule GnRH antagonists for the treatment of sex-hormone related conditions...

Week 46:

Celltech Chiroscience appears to be moving into new areas this week with claims modulators of the PDE 7 receptor. In an application published, as is the company's custom, under the name Darwin Discovery...
Integrin antagonists appear to be the focus of attention of several companies this week. Prominent among these is a series of three applications from Aventis Pharma claiming a broad range...
Australia is the source of a rather odd and as yet unexplained duplication phenomenon, since there are what seem to be two identical applications from that continent entitled...
Deserving a second glance is the Hewlett-Packard US patent issued this week with an abstract including the phrase "type matching reduces the likelihood of creating unfit child organisms"...

Week 45:

AstraZeneca has had some good news this week with the granting of EP652872 (originally published as WO9427988 on 8th December 1994), in which the company claims the magnesium salt of the proton-pump...
In contrast, Pfizer's patent portfolio has suffered a setback this week with a judgement from the UK High Court declaring a key patent relating to use of the blockbuster drug Viagra invalid...
The original product patent for sildenafil citrate is EP463756B, published 7th June 1991, claiming priority from 20th June 1990 and granted on 19th April 1995. Under the terms of this earlier patent...
Antagonists of the CCR5 receptor are the subject of newly published applications from both Schering Corporation and Takeda, the former with two new compound inventions and a formulation case...
Progesterone receptor modulators are the subject of an epic sequence of 20 new compound and formulation/uses cases from American Home Products and Ligand Pharmaceuticals...

Week 44:

Malaysia, Illinois and Cambridge (UK) are implicated in a theme covering several of this week's inventions. Latex from the Calophyllum lanigerum tree was screened by the US...
By chance presumably, two other inventions link to the one from Sarawak MediChem mentioned above. Apparently not connected with the Illinois venture, there is a Spanish company also called Medichem,...
IRL Inc of New Jersey is named as applicant on an application relating to novel oligosaccharide antibacterial agents. The di- and trisaccharides are structurally related to the moenomycin class...
It is relatively unusual for candidates of unknown structure to enter advanced clinical trials, but that is what seems to have happened in the case of one of GlaxoWellcome's antiasthmatic steroid antagonists...

Week 43:

Coelacanth Chemical Corporation of New Brunswick has two applications in rather different fields. In a new compound case there are claims to PPAR-gamma antagonists...
The term "targetshape" appears, possibly for the first time, in an application from Bios Group of Santa Fe, New Mexico. It is used in describing a process designed to identify initial candidate molecules...
The University of Geneva is linked indirectly with the Bios invention, though it takes a March 1998 press release from Ixsys to reveal that link; US5723323, licensed to Ixsys for the directed evolution technology...
Clues are accumulating in relation to Pfizer's ongoing interest in PDE-IV inhibitors, with a further application relating to synthesis of indazole derivatives. Use of such compounds...
Many of the companies and institutions benefiting from Current Patents Gazette were represented at the 10th Epidos Annual Conference, hosted by the European Patent Office...

Week 42:

The US NIH has claims this week to oligodeoxynucleotides that can be used to induce an immune response, where the pure or isolated oligodeoxynucleotides comprise at least about 10 nucleotides and the central...
Among this week's chemical process applications appear several cases that have links to drugs currently in development. Lilly has claims to a process for preparing 3-aryloxy-3-arylpropylamines and related...
This week has also seen fruition of an agreement between Nanogen and Becton Dickinson, announced on May 5th 1997, with the publication of 6 PCT applications published under the name of...
And finally, "Method for renewing living being permantly (sic)" is the strangely entitled application originating from a Tokyo based inventor...

Week 41:

Among the companies claiming new chemical entities in this week's PCT publications are two that appear to be new to international patenting. Esperion Pharmaceuticals of Ann Arbor in the US has claims to a series...
Elsewhere, Quebec based Pharmacor's application covers hydroxyphenyl derivatives with HIV integrase inhibitory properties. This relatively young Canadian biopharmaceutical company...
Also among this week's New Compound cases, specialist neuropharmaceutical company Neurogen can be seen with four new applications claiming aryl and heteroaryl fused aminoalkyl-imidazole derivatives that act as...
Millennium Pharmaceuticals have come up with a interesting new angle on combinatorial technology this week with claims to a series of combinatorial arrays aimed not at the preparation of new compound libraries but...
It has been announced this week that Merck and SmithKline Beecham have donated $6.5 million to a mouse genome project to enable public access to this information two years earlier than planned...

Week 40:

The University of Hertfordshire was linked by our analysts to an application on nuclease activity determination which appeared six weeks ago, WO0049172. The correctness of that inference...
Brevity, or perhaps obscurity, characterizes an application from King's College London entitled simply ¿Factor¿. The inventors are in the college's Biomedical Sciences Division...
Following on from last week's Aventis Cropscience case claiming herbicidal compounds with potential human therapeutic activities, four PCT applications from P&G...
Eleven applications last week from Human Genome Sciences, and ten the week before, are now followed by eighteen all entitled "Human secreted proteins". HGS has been patenting genetic material...
New companies seem to have appeared as innovators in the process chemistry field in both Hungary and Italy. Alex-Gyogyszer Kutatasi is becoming involved in the production of penicillins...

Week 39:

Knoll, with inventions from Germany, the UK and the US, is conspicuous with a three series of inventions relating the novel uses of known therapeutic compounds. Of 27 PCT applications...
Doxazosin, the subject of several recent inventions including applications from the originator, Pfizer, is also now the subject of claims from Knoll. Use in seizures and...
Aventis Cropscience, located in Frankfurt, Gemany, would not normally be expected to be involved in innovation relevant to human therapy, but an invention concerned with herbicidal heterocycles...
The Parker Hughes Institute is named as applicant this week on 12 PCT applications and as assignee on a US patent, all in the general field of cancer therapy, antiinfectives or immunomodulators...
Two PCT filings from the Danish biotech company Exiqon document the progress of the company's LNA (Locked Nucleic Acid) technology. LNA's contain a methylene...

Week 38:

Signal Pharmaceuticals of San Diego and Axys of South San Francisco have claims among this week's New Compounds to a series of novel modulators of estrogen receptors...
In contrast, Ono has lost a collaborator on its application claiming to a range of novel, therapeutic 1,3,4- oxadiazole derivatives. The compounds are related to a series of...
In Europe, Merck has seen the granting of EP828703 this week, originally filed on 25th May 1995 and published as WO9637457. The patent claims an asymmetric synthesis of...
Among the other granted European patents this week, Monsanto also has claims to retroviral protease inhibitors in EP735019 while HMR covers a series of biphenylic compounds...

Week 37:

Ceptyr Inc, the Washington-based discovery company has its first international patent application published only just over a year after its venture capital raising was completed...
The origins of the phosphatase expertise assembled by Ceptyr can be traced back more than ten years, to an application filed early in 1990 by Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory (CSHL)...
Novuspharma, as its derivation suggests, is new. The Italian company came into being as Roche acquired most of Boehringer Mannheim early in 1998, and its name has only recently begun to appear...
From the above casual observations it seems that not all of the patent property originally associated with Boehringer Mannheim has passed to Roche with the merger, and care needs to be exercised...
Ranbaxy in India, with further claims to forms of cephalexin, and Wyckoff in the US are among companies claiming syntheses of products which are already successful...

Week 36:

A public holiday in Switzerland on September 7th has unavoidably delayed publication of this week's Gazette by a few hours, and the PCT documents included bear the formal publication...
The other principal patent offices have also had their production problems this week. At the USPTO, US6112451 has issued bearing the title "Statement regarding federally sponsored..." ...
The European Patent Office has a problem of a rather different kind, and one which has been known about for some time. The particular issue is sequence listings associated with gene...
Glaxo is seeking the assistance of an Australian specialist, SGE International Pty in developing robotic microfluidic equipment...

Week 35:

SmithKline Beecham has two PCT applications published with titles employing a total of only seven characters, namely Q13 and tktA. Both of these enigmatic documents...
The University of California has a PCT application published this week in which protected aminoacids for use in dipeptide synthesis are described...
Meningitis remains both a challenge to scientists and a subject of popular concern, and two inventions this week describe further progress in the development of effective vaccines. Workers at Chiron SpA's...
As early as 1994 there were reports of an anticancer drug designated XR-5000 entering clinical trials in New Zealand. Patent protection for that candidate, an acridine derivative...
Biotech inventions classed in IPC C12n clearly outnumber alicyclic and heterocyclic inventions combined, in this week's published PCT applications. Among the granted European patents...

Week 34:

Schering AG appear to be putting considerable effort into development of epothilone analogs...
Continuing the vast interest in stem cell research, researchers at United States Surgical have developed mesenchymal stem cells with reduced immunogenicity...
DzGenes, a small medical genomics company, has filed its first PCT application disclosing single nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs) associated with end-stage renal disease...
Cell adhesion modulators feature from three major companies. Merck & Co are more specific in...
Neuropathic pain is the target addressed by AstraZeneca in a case relating to prostaglandin E antagonists. That in itself is not too unexpected...
Obscurity may also have been the fate awaiting an application from Bioreason Inc of New Mexico, whose specification entitled "Method and system for artificial intelligence..." ...
Not dissimilar, in that sense, is SB's application entitled "Apparatus and method for depersonalizing information". This invention...

Week 33:

The humble sea grape cannot often come under public scrutiny to quite the extent that it does in one of this week's US patents. A Florida-based private inventor, William Buckley, is claiming that an extract...
Natural products featuring elsewhere include phytosterols, the subject of an extraction process from Cognis Deutschland, and the cryptophycins which Lilly is pursuing in collaboration with teams at...
Antiviral optimization seems to be on the agenda for several companies. In its specialist field of NNRTIs, Medivir has already achieved considerable success in identifying leads. These include MIV-150...
From Germany comes news of a commitment to apply a narrow interpretation to new national legislation governing the patenting of genetic material. The changes are needed, as they will be throughout...

Week 32:

Equivalent patents are not covered in the Gazette, but sometimes it's a bit tough deciding what is actually an equivalent. Obviously if two cases quote the same priority, they must have essentially the same...
This week's new compound cases sees AHP and AstraZeneca consolidating some of their existing projects with the publication of multiple applications in the field of cardiovascular disorders and antiinflammatories...
Among this week's granted European patents are a couple of interesting examples from the field of biotechnology. Novartis has been granted EP515313B, first filed 20th May 1992...

Week 31:

BMS and Glaxo are among the companies this week patenting in rather unexpected fields. The BMS invention, entitled "Sonic impinging jet crystallization apparatus and process", is treated in the Gazette...
Serotonin 5-HT2C receptors appear to be a recurring theme among this week's New Compound cases. Lilly has claims to a series of aminoalkylbenzofurans that act as...
This week in Nature (406, 455; 2000), a correspondence from John Barton (professor of law at Stamford Univ) and Joseph Strauss (Max Planck Institute for Foreign and International Patent,...) ...

Week 30:

Forensics, criminology, genealogy and genomics come together in an unusual invention from Isis Innovation relating to the correlation between chromosomal DNA and family names. Professor Bryan Sykes...
Moves are afoot in the US to end recurring budgetary uncertainty at the Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO). Traditionally part of the fees received by the USPTO, currently $1.2bn per year...
This week sees the first published application of Kinetix Pharmaceuticals of Medford, Massachuesetts. This privately held biopharmaceutical company, founded in March 1997, specializes in the discovery and development of small molecule drugs...
Errata: In last week's front page Highlights we referred to a case implying collaboration between Aventis and Hoechst. The case (WO0042061) is in fact in the name of Hoechst Marion Roussel (now Aventis)...

Week 29:

Warner-Lambert has a cluster of six MEK inhibitor applications published this week, and Byk Gulden has five covering PDE IV inhibitory phenanthridines...
Bayer possibly deserves closer attention, since an application describing arylimino heterocycles as progesterone receptor binding agents may signify entry into a new discovery field. It is possible that...
Dae Sang is a Korean company entering the international patent scene for the first time, with an application describing the enzymic transformation of cephalosporin C; there is however a link...
Another collaboration, between Aventis and Hoechst, is the implied subject of an application from the latter in which intermediates for an interleukin 1(-converting enzyme (ICE) inhibitor...
The BIO (Biotechnology Industry Organization) has been making representations to a US House Judiciary Committee on the patenting of biotechnology. Genentech and Incyte...

Week 28:

Aventis attracts attention again this week with a pair of applications claiming the synthesis of aminoesters and adenosines. On the face of it these inventions are unrelated, but a couple of common...
On Friday July 7th there was a press release from Alizyme reporting that a lipase inhibitor, ATL-962 had successfully completed phase Ia clinical trials...
The head of the Max Delbr??Centre for Molecular Medicine in Berlin and the President of the Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft, two key German science organizations, have warned...
Natural products feature in several new applications this week. Taxols continue to attract the attention of Phytogen and another Canadian individual inventor. It was of course the bark...

Week 27:

It was only a matter of time before a relevant document appeared bearing the recently introduced A61p as its sole International Patent Classification (IPC), even though the guidelines...
KS Biomedix, based just to the south-west of London, has had to wait almost nine years for the grant of a European patent (EP570414B) relating to the naphthoquinone antiinflammatories...
Erratum: In our week 0025 highlights, and again in week 0026, we mistakenly referred to a collaboration between GW, Roche and Pfizer on CDKIs and possibly other...

Week 26:

The GW/Pfizer/Roche triangular collaboration on CDK inhibitors (WO0035906, etc) surfaces again this week, in the form of an application from Glaxo, which names in addition inventors located at Pfizer's...
A Lonza process application, reading on to antiviral nucleosides from SB, serves as a reminder of similar technology we highlighted five years ago...
Two biotech IP issues making headline news this week concern the UK's Roslin "Dolly the Sheep" Institute and Elan Pharmaceuticals' Alzheimer's mouse...
Classification issues raised here last week have prompted some interesting correspondence concerning the 7th Edition of the International Patent Classification, not least the reference to Mikhail Makarov's...
Another IPC surprise appears this week in the form of an application from P&G entitled "Method of using steam ironing of fabrics as a way of causing reduction of physiological..."...
Whenever we come across a patent document naming no corporate applicant or assignee, we do our best to associate it with some recognizable institution, such as a hospital or even a former employer...

Week 25:

Australian magnolia bark has provided researchers at Schering-Plough's New Jersey site with a potent muscarinic M2 antagonist, himbacine. The tricyclic nucleus of this alkaloid...
One of the recurring themes at the ERBI showcase (reviewed briefly here last week) was that of cell proliferation and potential cancer therapies utilizing the associated signaling mechanisms...
The inventions included in our Section C cover both conventional process development chemistry and the more fundamental technology associated with combinatorial synthesis and high throughput screening...
We note a rash of relevant cases published this week bearing A61P class marks (virtually all as secondary classes), and have to admit that we are taken a little by surprise. A moment's thought, however...

Week 24:

Biocon India Ltd, apparently unrelated to Biocon OY and other companies using this name with national suffixes, is seen to be developing improved syntheses of mycophenolic acid esters. The mofetil...
Infrastructure patenting, protecting technology platforms, is often remarkably difficult to match up with the relevant patent property, but this is what the Gazette aims to achieve whenever possible. An example...
Clues to the IP rights protecting such broad technology are sometimes to be found in the press releases which appear when a licensing deal is struck, and as it happens there was such an event...
The Human Genome Project, approaching an important milestone, was a major focus at a meeting held earlier this week near Cambridge, UK, by ERBI, the Eastern Region Biotechnology Initiative...

Week 23:

Chelating agents feature in two processes cases, though in one of these the link with pharmaceutical is perhaps a little tenuous. Schering AG has claims to a one-pot synthesis of cyclenes...
Paroxetine, the highly successful antidepressant SSRI licensed by Novo Nordisk to SmithKline Beecham, has begun to lose its basic patent protection, and there has been a considerable amount...
Enantiomers of established products feature in two other chemical process cases which may offer pointers to future brand revitalization efforts. From Darwin Discovery in Cambridge UK...

Week 22:

The University of Michigan was wrongly implicated last week in our comments about the "euthanasia composition". The owner of the controversial patent is in fact Michigan State University...
Unscholarly acrimony has erupted in the otherwise dignified atmosphere of the University of Chicago, over the inventorship of a herpes simplex vaccine. Dr Bernard Roizman...
After WO9938013, a second patent application from Xerion Pharmaceuticals, a young German-based biotechnology company was published this week. It describes a device for automated...
Further investigation of an application published on March 9th reveals interesting developments at the Californian site of BioMedicines. In WO0012086 the company claims a method of mitigating...

Week 21:

"Euthanasia Compositions" is the somewhat forbidding title of a European patent which is making headline news in Germany this week. The University of Michigan's EP516811B, first published...
Glaxo has a case published this week describing how nicotine addiction is treated using the phase II noradrenaline uptake inhibitor BW-1555U88. However, there are at least two other cases...
In another Europen application there are claims to a synthesis of Pfizer's sildenafil, from the Indian company Orchid Chemical & Pharmaceuticals. Although Pfizer retains...
Arcaris (formerly Ventana), Zdravlje and Proteo Tools are among the emerging companies to appear as applicants in this week's Gazette. There is also a somewhat unexpected...

Week 20:

The European Patent Office, which began operating in 1978, has just published its millionth application. However unlike the issue of US5000000...
A sharp-eyed reader correctly points to some inaccuracies in last week's comments on forthcoming changes in US patent procedures. Possibly a significant point...
A hearing last week at the European Patent Office in Munich received a representation which was somewhat unusual, if not unique, in the form a petition bearing half a million signatures. Under the striking motto "Free the Free Tree"...
At a conference in Atlanta in April Lifestream Technologies, in conjunction with Microsoft, presented their Lifestream Cholesterol Monitor...
Oxford GlycoSciences announced this week that they have been granted a US patent covering pioneering high-throughput proteomics technology...

Week 19:

At an excellent meeting of the Patent Information Users Group (PIUG) last week there was further news of forthcoming US patent law changes. The conference in Crystal City, close to the USPTO...
Antiviral compositions are the cause of a recently reported conflict between an established Pennsylvania-based company and a substantial privately owned European group. Hemispherx Biopharma, formerly...
This week, Genzyme Transgenic has published an application relating to the creation of transgenic and cloned mammals, with particular mention to transgenic goats. The company has already developed...

Week 18:

On April 28th the European Union joined Australia, Japan, Singapore and the US in allowing for drugs to be designated "orphan medicinal products". The designation is dependent upon the drug's being...
For almost a decade, Lilly has embarked on a large-scale research program relating to antifungal echinocandin derivatives. However, the lead compound that finally emerged, anidulafungin,...
A dispute over gene patenting has emerged between the NIH and the USPTO. The disagreement centers on whether a patent should be granted on a genomic sequence of unknown function...

Week 17:

A new therapeutic mechanism is described by the Danish company BioImage in a pair of applications published just one year after the former Novo Nordisk unit began its separate existence. In one document...
The French Commisariat ?'Energie Atomique (CEA) has established a reputation for contributions to combinatorial technology, and this week claims a device with sample wells and an analysis support...
Peroxisome proliferator-activated receptor (PPAR) modulators are a hot topic this week, with several companies claiming new compounds exhibiting this activity and their use in the treatment of conditions...
It was announced this week that the US District Court of Massachusetts in Boston granted Amgen's motion for summary judgment of literal infringement. The court ruled that the HMR...
Also this week, it has been suggested that the Japanese industry is showing an increased willingness to invest in genomics and post-genomics research. This has been brought about by the announcement...

Week 16:

Easter and May public holidays disrupt three consecutive working weeks, in the UK at least, but we hope to maintain near-perfect scheduling of Current Patents Gazette...
Approved names of drugs in development are rarely quoted in patent specifications, but this week Pfizer accords front-page recognition to sildenafil, and by way of confirmation adds its better-known trade name, Viagra...
Compulsory citation of code numbers would certainly go a long way towards sorting out the rapidly evolving NK1 antagonist patenting from Merck & Co. Two US process cases...
Schering Corp's WO0020623, or at least its title, was included in Section C of last week's Gazette as a result of an editorial error. We would never intentionally include a systematic name...
Last week, two European Politicians launched the SOS Human Genome, an initiative proposing a moratorium on implementing the European Commission's directive for harmonizing biotechnology...

Week 15:

Celebrex, the Searle/Pfizer COX-2 inhibitor now described as the fastest-selling drug of all time, is yet again in the litigation news this week. The University of Rochester, announcing...
Bones, and in particular synthetic bone made from macroporous ceramic foam, are the focus of a Biomedical materials unit established within Queen Mary & Westfield...
Novartis and ISIS Pharma have generated a more than usually complex situation in seeking protection for their jointly developed oligonucleotides. These include ISIS-3521, also designated CGP-64128A...
A British judge ruled last week that Affymetrix did not have the right to use techniques developed by Ed Southern, an Oxford professor perhaps best known as the inventor of the 'Southern blot' that is used...

Week 14:

The serotonin uptake inhibitor sibutramine, originated by Boots in the early 1980s, is turning out to be a very versatile product. Originally seen as an antidepressant and obesity treatment...
Thalidomide is another product displaying great adaptability following its disastrous launch as a sedative in 1958. These Highlights have often included comments on the claiming of new indications...
The recent UK budget included an intellectual property provision which may well have gone unnoticed, were it not for a note in the Official Journal (Patents) highlighting the abolition of stamp duty on IP transactions...
An issue raised in the courts last week was, 'Does a patent on a recombinantly produced protein give the owner rights to versions of that protein produced in other ways ?'. The biotechnology company Amgen...

Week 13:

GPI NIL Holdings seems to be a fairly new entrant to the drug discovery scene. Based in Wilmington, Delaware, GPI NIL has but one previous patent publication, US5721256...
There are also three interwoven process applications relating to isochromones. This issue began with the appearance of EP947512, a Showa Denko application covering compounds...
Two ACE inhibitor syntheses relate to Merck's enalapril and lisinopril, though the latter is the subject of claims by Kaneka. Other products noted include eflornithine...
Kyowa Medex, still apparently associated with Kyowa Hakko, is developing screening and diagnostic technology in connection with the latter's cholesterol drugs. Proligo, on the other hand...

Week 12:

There is news from Geneva of a ruling from a legal panel of the World Trade Organization, in which Canadian laws on development of generic pharmaceuticals have been under scrutiny. The WTO judged...
Among recent granted European patents is EP854735B, in which two Paris-based inventors, brothers apparently, show that it is possible for non-corporate applicants...
Elan Pharmaceuticals, based in Ireland, is suing the Minnesota-based Mayo Foundation for Medical Education and Research over mice used to study Alzheimer's disease...
Ambiguity continues to surround Merck's NK-1 antagonist development program, as a further process case appears claiming the synthesis of morpholine derivatives...

Week 11:

A valaciclovir tablet containing colloidal silicon dioxide is claimed by Wellcome in a granted European patent EP806943B, first published as WO9622082, and Roche has succeeded...
Among the more unexpected relationships in this week's applications are implied collaborations involving Taiwanese, Hungarian, German and Belgian workers. The link with...
An application from Schering AG claims a crystalline solvate of an estrogen antagonist which has an interesting history, and clearly deserves our attention. The conventional estratriene template...
It's not every day that leading politicians give patents a mention, but this week they have been on the agenda of talks between Bill Clinton and Tony Blair. The world leaders exhorted...

Week 10:

A series of chemical process cases from SmithKline Beecham at first sight unrelated, describes the steps required to synthesize phenylurea derivatives. One of the reagents used...
From the UK national press we have gleaned a report that a citizen of Bristol has filed a patent application at the UK Patent Office entitled "Myself". She is reported to have...
Cerebrus Pharmaceuticals of Wokingham, UK has five applications this week claiming a variety of indolines, pyrroloindoles, pyridoindoles, pyrroloquinolines and azepinoindoles as...
Elsewhere, among this week's Biotech cases an application from Incyte Genetics can be found claiming methods for obtaining nucleic acid containing a mutation...

Week 09:

More complications than usual surround a taxoid invention which names two British and two French inventors. Two of the three pertinent applications were filed at the European Patent Office in August 1998, by an attorney...
New compound inventions rarely reveal completely new research, and it is quite typical to find that more than three-quarters of the cases in Section A of the Gazette represent continuations of discovery themes that have been visible...
At the other extreme, a tiny BMS team attracts attention because it seems to have moved into a completely new area: the pair seek protection for antibacterial isoxazolinones...
From the US there is news of an impending decision from the New Jersey District Court in Newark concerning Bristol-Myers' long-running dispute with nine generic manufacturer's of Taxol. Firms such as IVAX, Mylan...

Week 08:

Patent Examiners, like everyone else these days, must often surf the worldwide web when looking for prior art to cite against applications. That's all very well if the end point of the search...
In a press release dated February 22nd, the European Patent Office admits, with regret that the qualification "(non-human)" was omitted in error from the wording of a claim to...
On 22 February 2000, Roche announced that the EPO has affirmed the issuance of its key patent on the recombinant Taq enzyme (EP395736B), upholding all of the company's patent claims...
An interesting case may be seen in this week's New Compound section where an application filed in the US by Massachusetts based Eukarion claims bipyridine manganese complexes for use in the treatment of...

Week 07:

Those who went to the trouble of visiting the UK Court Service website to find out more about the Searle/Merck decision (see last week's Highlights) may have been somewhat surprised to learn that the...
It is now common practice among large US-based pharmaceutical companies to start the filing process with provisional applications and converting them to regular applications after one year, thereby gaining...
Herpes virus continues to be a hot topic in Section D. Two UK companies specializing in the field feature this week. Neurovex, a UCL spin-off, claims herpesviral vectors for dendritic cells and...

Week 06:

A judgement from the UK Patents Court on February 4th seems to have important implications for the first companies to bring selective cyclooxygenase-2 (COX2) inhibitors to the antiinflammatory market...
A mis-spelling in the official title of a natural product case gives the initial impression that Takeda has succeeded in extracting a totally new therapeutic substance, indolemycin...
Several times during the past year we have been tempted to comment on the use of the name Aventis on newly published patent applications, coinciding with the new name selected by the merging RPR and HMR...
Guidelines on research tools issued recently by the US NIH came under fire last week from representatives of several small biotechnology companies at a symposium on intellectual property...
Legislation to tighten up the supervision of federally funded human gene-therapy trials was introduced into the US House of Representatives last week...

Week 05:

Tap Holdings of Deerfield, Illinois, is rarely named as a patent applicant. However, the Takeda/Abbott joint venture this week has a US patent issued on the subject of COPD...
Omeprazole, originally patented by Astra in the late 1970s, is the subject of an AstraZeneca press release dated February 1st. The reason is that a German company, Ratiopharm GmbH,...
Research on human embryonic stem cells has come a step closer to being legalized in Japan...
Finally, following our speculation two weeks ago about the malpractice case reported in the Cincinnati Enquirer, there is now a document published, which may reflect an equally unsatisfactory situation in Texas...

Week 04:

We would like to apologize for poor quality of some of the graphs in last week's article on the merger between Glaxo Welcome and SmithKline Beecham, particularly the factorial maps...
After four years of negotiations between the US NIH and the pharmaceutical company DuPont, NIH-funded scientists now have free use of the 'OncoMouse', a transgenic animal...
New companies making an appearance in the Gazette this week include Hertfordshire-based AdProTech, which claims polypeptide derivatives of angiogenesis inhibiting proteins...
And finally, in the recent years, SpectRx and Altea Technologies, both based in Georgia, have filed a series of joint applications, such as WO9800193 or WO9944637, concerned with...

Week 03:

The week began with news that Glaxo-SmithKline is finally set to come into existence, after months of on/off rumors. In our benchmarking study of patenting in the mid-1990s (Current Trends in Pharmaceutical Discovery Vol 2 Nos 1&2), SB...
Notice of grant of two UK patents relating to cloning technology was published this week. GB2318578 and its divisional GB2331751 appear under the names of joint applicants Roslin Institute...
An intriguing patent has been granted by the US Patent and Trademark Office this week claiming a method and apparatus for stimulating the healing of living tissue by repairing damaged aura...

Week 02:

In addition to patents and applications from the US, EPO, UK and WIPO published during the week ending January 14th 2000, this issue of the Gazette covers European applications published on...
Though Current Patents Gazette covers some 350 new pharma/biotech inventions each week, amounting to about 20% of the output of the major patent offices, it is remarkable that no company...
While on the topic of statistics, it may be of interest to note that Current Patents' production database for the past year contains almost 3,000 unique applicant names. However just over half of these were...
Broccoli and cauliflower germplasm may not seem a very relevant subject for Gazette readers, but in fact John's Hopkins School of Medicine's application on Cruciferae is directed towards producing plants...
After the five-fold patent assault on sildenafil, the subject of comments in last week's highlights, this week sees three international applications relating to compositions of paroxetine, the antidepressant SSRI originated by Ferrosan...
Farnesyl protein transferase inhibitors feature in no fewer than nine international applications published this week, and in at least two of these there are clear indications of the applicants' preferred development candidates. Merck & Co...

Week 01:

We wish all of our readers a happy and prosperous New Year, of course, and are pleased to report that Current Patents Gazette has barely been affected by what was, in the UK at least, a somewhat protracted sequence of public holidays...
An application filed by Merck & Co in June 1986 continues to occupy the attention of the Company's attorneys and the USPTO. Having initially been subject to a couple of continuations-in-part...
Following an application last week (WO9966933) from the University of Kentucky's New Millennium Pharmaceutical Research, there is another this week...
There are reports of changes of patent law, or at least practice, from both sides of the Atlantic. Both are concerned with patenting of life forms, but whereas the general effect in the US...



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