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US: A federal judge in San Francisco ruled December 7 that a patent for DNA analysis owned by Swiss biotechnology company Hoffman-La Roche was obtained by deliberately misleading the USPTO and is invalid. US District Judge Vaughn Walker upheld a challenge by Promega which argued that scientists got the patent in 1990 through false claims. Those scientists worked for Cetus, which sold rights to the patent to Hoffman La Roche in 1991. The patented substance is called Taq DNA Polymerase. Cetus inventors had convinced the patent office that they had a substance better than those developed in the 1980s. Hoffman-La Roche is appealing, and contends that the ruling invalidates the patent for only one form of Taq, and not for the more common and lucrative recombinant Taq.

Brazilian reform provokes alarm

Deals

EPO gives green light to Novartis

After several aborted attempts at legislation and a WTO hearing last year, India is now rushing through laws to overhaul its IP protection and comply with TRIPs.

As an outgrowth of the rule of Markman v Westview Instruments, Inc, 517 US 380 (1996) in which the US Supreme Court unanimously affirmed an en banc majority ruling of the US Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit that patent claim construction is an issue of law for the court to determine, the US District Court for the Southern District of New York, on November 8 1999 in TMPatents LP v International Business Machines Corp (53 USPQ 2d 1093, 1096-1104) ruled that a patentee whose patent claims were construed by a court in an earlier litigation is collaterally estopped to challenge that construction in a later suit involving the same patent. The ruling is one of first impression and has not yet been addressed by the Federal Circuit itself.

The recent decision in Kimberley-Clark v Proctor & Gamble (Court of Appeal, November 24 1999) clarifies that the UK Court retains discretion to refuse patent amendment applications.

USPTO demands review of Y2K

Filing @ USPTO

Chipie wins global victory