The USPTO has a new search engine for finding decisions of the Board of Patent Appeals and Interferences. (Link). As far as I know, none of the 308 decisions filed in 2006 are precedential. Rather, it seems the last precedential decision was Ex parte Lundgren from 2005. (Decision).
Traditionally, the vast majority of BPAI decisions involved underlying applications that remained secret. With the advent of publication of applications, the BPAI has become a more public body and continues to move toward the goal of providing sound decisions that both adjudicate the particular issues in question and provide further guidance to other applicants and examiners.
For someone thinking of starting a new blog, I would suggest a BPAI blog in the mold of John Welch’s excellent TTABlog.
I was hoping that someone could address the issue that therapeutic antibodies (e.g. humanized, fully human, etc.) are facing during patent prosecution in the EU. Specifically, the EU is taking the stance that merely engineering the antibody is insufficient to overcome inventive step rejections. The Applicants need to show something above and beyond lower immunogenicity. Their stance is inhibiting the ability of biotechs and pharmas to obtain coverage for their therapeutic entities. Are there any prosecution strategies that are working?
Posted by: Sheela Mohan-Peterson | May 15, 2006 at 12:17 PM