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Highlights of Biotechnology and Pharmaceutical Patent Activities

 

Cooper & Dunham’s biotechnology and pharmaceutical group currently includes partners, counsel, associates, and scientific advisors (many with advanced scientific degrees). This group is distinct from our litigation group, members of which have worked as a team with members of our biotechnology and pharmaceutical group on a number of important recent cases.

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With respect to patent drafting and prosecution work we have prepared, filed and prosecuted over 1,000 U.S. and over 1,000 foreign patents in the fields of biotechnology and pharmaceuticals.  Cooper & Dunham consistently appears in surveys such as “Firms That Prosecuted The Best Patents” in the United States in the biotechnology, pharmaceutical and chemical fields. 

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Commercially important biotechnology patents on which we have worked include the following:

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  • Consolidated Reexaminations of basic patent on NF-Kappa B owned by Harvard, MIT and the Whitehead Institute; patent successfully asserted at District Court level against Eli Lilly & Company and currently being asserted against Amgen.

  • Reexamination of CSIRO/Benetec patent relating to siRNA.

  • Reexamination of Columbia University’s Axel patents on cotransformation and coamplification which were licensed by more than 30 companies who have paid Columbia more than $600 million in royalties and which were successfully litigated against Roche in Boston, Massachusetts and successfully defended against oppositions in Europe and Japan.

  • Sloan-Kettering’s patents on G-CSF which are exclusively licensed to Amgen and which were obtained after prevailing in an interference with Chugai.

  • Columbia University’s and Stanford’s jointly owned chimeric antibody patent which covers Remicade® and certain other commercial antibodies, e.g. commercial products of Medimmune.

  • Kennedy Institute of Rheumatology’s U.S. and foreign patent for combination therapy involving methotrexate and anti-TNF antibodies (Centocor’s Remicade® and Abbott’s Humira®) or soluble TNF receptor (Amgen/Wyeth’s Embrel®).

  • Australian Government’s (C.S.I.R.O.’s) patents on ribozymes exclusively licensed to Johnson & Johnson which has an anti-HIV drug in clinical development.

  • Sloan-Kettering patents on interleukin-2 which are exclusively license to Chiron.

  • Schering-Plough’s (formerly Mallinkrodt’s) patents on recombinant animal herpesviral vaccines.

  • Group Limagrain’s patents on genetically modified zucchini and melon.

  • Columbia’s anti-CD40L antibody patents which have been licensed exclusively to Biogen and which were successfully defended in an interference proceeding initiated by IDEC (Noelle v. Lederman) based on patent rights IDEC had exclusively licensed from Dartmouth.

  • Sloan-Kettering patents on prostate specific membrane antigen antibodies which are in clinical studies being conducted in the United States.

  • Progenics Pharmaceuticals humanized anti-CCR5 monoclonal antibody for treating HIV-1 infections which is in clinical trials.

  • Savient Pharmaceuticals oxandrine® product for treating loss of body mass in HIV-1 infected patients.

  • Genyzme’s Thyroid Stimulating Hormone which is covered by Sloan-Kettering patents exclusively licensed to Genzyme.

  • Bayer Corporation patents on serum based diagnostic assays for tumor markers including HER2.

  • Virologic’s diagnostic tests for monitoring appearance of anti-HIV drug resistance.

  • Columbia University’s patent on green fluorescent protein.

  • Synaptic’s (now Lundbeck AS’) patents for cloned human G-protein coupled receptors, certain of which are exclusively licensed to Eli Lilly and Company and certain of which were successfully litigated against MDS Panlabs and Euroscreen in the U.S. District Courts in New Jersey.

  • Australian Government’s (C.S.I.R.O.’s) patents on omega-3 production in terrestrial plants.

  • Australian Government’s (C.S.I.R.O.’s) patents on high amylose wheat (high resistant starch wheat).

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Commercially important pharmaceutical (i.e., small molecule) patents on which we have worked include the following:

 

  • Pharmacia’s (now Pfizer’s) Latanoprost® glaucoma drug which is the subject of an exclusive license under Columbia University U.S. and foreign patents and which has been successfully asserted against Novartis, Allergan, Alcon and the generic manufacturer Par Pharmaceuticals; successfully defended against a claim of incorrect inventorship brought by a former medical school student; and successfully defended against oppositions in Europe and Japan.

  • OSI Pharmaceutical’s U.S. and foreign patents for its TARCEVA® cancer drug which is approved for marketing in the United States, Europe and Japan, and is being comarketed with Genentech in the U.S. and by Roche outside the U.S.

  • Teva Pharmaceutical’s U.S. and foreign patents for its Rasagiline® drug for Parkinson’s disease which is approved for marketing in Europe and the United States.

  • Teva Pharmaceutical’s U.S. and foreign patents for its Copaxone® drug for Multiple Sclerosis which is approved for marketing in Europe and the United States.

  • Synaptic Pharmaceutical Corporation’s patents on the use of a selective alpha 1a adrenergic receptor antagonist to treat benign prostate hypertrophy for which clinical studies are being, or have been, conducted by nonexclusive licensees, Johnson & Johnson, Merck, Glaxo SmithKline, and Ranbaxy Pharmaceuticals.

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