A single wrong residue can mean a patent does not cover the product. Evolve’s AI Sequence Agents build ST.26 listings in code, check every residue, keep the claims covering the lead in line with the IP strategy from drafting to grant, and check the sequences in granted patents.
How much data does a Patentee need to claim every molecule that hits a target? For antibodies, the Boards of Appeal have long accepted that identifying a new target or epitope can justify a claim to the whole functional genus of antibodies that bind it. The recent decision in T 1355/24 extends that generosity to…
It is now abundantly clear that AI cannot be ignored by the patent industry. However, amongst the private practice firms, there still remains a divergence of approach, with many attorneys still not using AI in their day-to-day practice.
Empagliflozin (Jardiance) is approved in the US for reducing the risk of cardiovascular death in adults with type 2 diabetes (T2D) and established cardiovascular disease, and in Europe for reducing the risk of cardiovascular death and hospitalisation for heart failure in adults with heart failure. The recent decision in T 0251/25 nonetheless found Boehringer Ingelheim’s…
Sometimes patent law is about procedures and not inventions. The appeal in T 1168/24 related to the lipid nanoparticle (LNP) technology behind the COVID-19 vaccines, opposed by Merck and Moderna. After two rounds of opposition and two appeals, the patent was revoked for added matter. Whilst the global litigation surrounding LNPs is interesting in its…
Kymab is famous as the Cambridge antibody mouse company that fought Regeneron all the way to the UK Supreme Court, and won, on sufficiency (no mean feat, given the very strict approach the UK courts have taken to the sufficiency test for pharmaceutical inventions in recent years). In T 0527/24, Kymab was on the other…
As patent attorneys, we are by now all hopefully well versed in the confidentiality and hallucination risks of using AI. However, as AI tools are increasingly used to read, summarise and come to conclusions about third-party documents, there is another risk we need to think about: prompt injection. This is the sneaky practice of hiding…
The Federal Circuit’s decision in Wyeth v AstraZeneca (No. 2024-2325) applied the enablement test to a dose invention. The case is an interesting contrast to the other recent case to apply enablement to a method of treatment claim, Teva v Eli Lilly.
Albert – Construe is the latest addition to Evolve’s proprietary AI toolkit. It construes a set of claims, sets out with supporting evidence what each unclear term means, highlights any inconsistencies caused by other disclosures within an application, and flags where amendments may have changed the scope of a claim term.
G 1/24 requires that the description must always be “consulted” to interpret a claim. The question remains whether a definition in the description can override an otherwise clear meaning in the claims. In T 0715/24, Bristol-Myers Squibb (BMS) sought to persuade the Board of Appeal that a negative feature, read together with a paragraph of…
