IPO Webinar on Written Description of Biotech Inventions

The Intellectual Property Owners Association (IPO) will offer a one-hour webinar on "Written Description of Biotech Inventions: Insight from the USPTO" on October 10, 2013 beginning at 2:00 pm (ET).  Daniel Kolker, Supervisory Patent Examiner for Art Unit 1644 at the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office, will discuss how the agency's Written Description Training Materials, last revised in 2008, mesh with recent court decisions.  The panel, which also includes David Halstead of Ropes & Gray LLP and Deborah Martin of Pfizer, Inc., will consider how innovators can both protect their inventions and be sure of their freedom to operate, as well as discuss claims on an antibody which "binds to an antigen at residues X, Y, and Z of the antigen," and whether these claims are patentable even though they provide no structural information about the claimed antibodies.  The panel will also address the type of disclosure needed to support patentability and broad scope, and how recent case law should inform innovators' filing strategies throughout drug discovery and development.

The registration fee for the webinar is $120 (government and academic rates are available upon request).  Those interested in registering for the webinar can do so here.

Comments

[6]

""binds to an antigen at residues X, Y, and Z of the antigen," and whether these claims are patentable even though they provide no structural information about the claimed antibodies. "

If you actually show the structure in the spec, and show that you have good WD by either showing a number of embodiments or telling us how they're all related structurally to perform that functionality then I don't think you'll run into any problems. Of course, if you don't, then you probably will, since, unlike the software "arts" these claims are involved in the useful arts.