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The DuPont Factors are a set of 13 factors used by the United States Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) to determine whether there is a likelihood of confusion between two trademarks.

In Amerigen Pharmaceuticals Limited v. UCB Pharma GMBH, 2017-2596 (Fed. Cir. January 11, 2019), the Federal Circuit upheld the Board’s IPR finding that claims 1-5 and 21-24 of UCB’s U.S. Patent 6,868,650 were not obvious.[1]  The patent claims cover Toviaz® (Fesoterodine), an antimuscarinic drug to treat urinary incontinence.[2]  Judge Lourie included a remark […]

Recent data from NOAA, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, indicates that current atmospheric carbon dioxide (CO2) levels are at 409 ppm as of October 2018. This is a 36% increase from the highest historical CO2 level,1 and is increasingly being attributed to human activity, namely fossil fuel combustion in power generation, […]

The past year was a big year for FDA approved new drugs and biologics – 59 in fact, compared to 46 in 2017 and a mere 22 in 2016. From the published list of approvals on the FDA websiteNovel Drug Approvals for 2018, we compiled data on the listed patents […]

As discussed in our previous article, antibody-drug conjugates (ADCs) have emerged as a highly promising class of anti-cancer drugs, and significant technical innovations are being made in all three components of the ADC, i.e. the antibody, the drug payload, and the linker joining them. The linker has been an area of […]

Software is a generic term to refer to a collection of data or executing code used by a computer to implement arithmetic operations or logical operations. Back in 1936, Allen Turing, in his landmark paper On Computable Numbers proposed the capable use of instructions (i.e. software) to execute functions through his Turing […]

“You can never be too rich or too thin” has been attributed to Wallace Simpson, the colorful Duchess of Windsor who charmed King George to abdicate the throne of England in 1936.[1] However, when it comes to trademarks, a mark that is lacking a bit of heft is not likely to […]

Arista Networks, Inc. (Arista) petitioned for an IPR of Cisco Systems, Inc.’s (“Cisco”) patent, U.S. 7,340,597, relating to protecting computer network systems from outside attack using a logging module.[1] Claims 1 and 29 are as follows: 1.An apparatus comprising: a communications device comprising: a subsystem; and a logging module, coupled to […]

Now that the first RNA interference (RNAi)-based therapeutic, ONPATTROTM (patisiran, developed by Alnylam Pharmaceuticals), recently received FDA approval, it is not surprising that such drugs are gaining considerable attention.  However, the underlying technology has been around for quite some time.  Craig Mello and Andrew Fire won the 2006 Nobel Prize in […]

This image is from a video posted by Duke University which can be found here. Typically, we think of patents as the main tool that allows for product exclusivity in the pharmaceutical industry.  However, exclusivity has a regulatory component.  For example, a new drug product cannot be marketed until it has […]