14/03/03

US judge turns university's golden patent into lead

By: David Malakoff

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<h1>US judge turns university's golden patent into lead</h1>
<h4>By David Malakoff</h4>
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<div id="article-body">A US university's dream of reaping a billion-dollar windfall from a drug patent suffered a serious setback last week when its patent claim was ruled to be invalid.<BR><BR>Three years ago, the University of Rochester, New York, was granted a patent that it originally filed in 1992 on the discovery of a way to inhibit a gene (COX-2) that causes inflammation. The university then sued drug giants Pharmacia and Pfizer, which had been making COX-2 inhibitor drugs for years, arguing that the school was entitled to significant royalties.<BR><BR>Some university officials predicted that the patent would become the most valuable intellectual property ever held by a US university. But last week a federal judge dismissed the university's claim as "little more than a research plan". He said that although the patent outlines a process for finding COX-2 inhibitors, it fails to describe a specific invention.<BR><BR><A
href="http://www.scidev.net/sci.cfm?redir=http://www.sciencemag.org/cgi/content/full/299/5613/1638a?ijkey=zfL/mb4R0fq9g&keytype=ref&siteid=sci" target="_blank" onclick="pageTracker._trackPageview('/tracking/external/'+this.href);">Link to full <em>Science</em> news article</A><BR><BR>Reference: <em>Science</em> 299, 1638 (2003)</div>
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<p>This article was originally published on <a href="http://www.scidev.net/Global" target="_blank">SciDev.Net</a>. Read the <a href="http://www.scidev.net/global/intellectual-property/news/us-judge-turns-universitys-golden-patent-into-lea.html" target="_blank">original article</a>.</p>
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A US university's dream of reaping a billion-dollar windfall from a drug patent suffered a serious setback last week when its patent claim was ruled to be invalid.

Three years ago, the University of Rochester, New York, was granted a patent that it originally filed in 1992 on the discovery of a way to inhibit a gene (COX-2) that causes inflammation. The university then sued drug giants Pharmacia and Pfizer, which had been making COX-2 inhibitor drugs for years, arguing that the school was entitled to significant royalties.

Some university officials predicted that the patent would become the most valuable intellectual property ever held by a US university. But last week a federal judge dismissed the university's claim as "little more than a research plan". He said that although the patent outlines a process for finding COX-2 inhibitors, it fails to describe a specific invention.

Link to full Science news article

Reference: Science 299, 1638 (2003)