By Kevin E. Noonan –

On October 24th, the Patent Trial and Appeal Board scheduled back-to-back oral hearings for interferences between Sigma-Aldrich (Senior Party) and Junior Party The Regents of the University of California, University of Vienna, and Emmanuelle Charpentier (collectively, "CVC"; Interference No. 106,132; Order) and Junior Party The Broad Institute, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and The President and Fellows of Harvard College (collectively, "Broad"; Interference No. 106,133; Order).  In the '132 Interference, the hearing will commence at 1:00 pm EDT on November 17th, and for the '133 interference, the hearing will start at 3:00 pm EDT that day.  The hearings will be conducted by telephone.

Interested members of the public may be granted access by request sent to PTABHearings@uspto.gov prior to the hearing date.

The issues to be discussed can be found on the PTAB website and in several prior Patent Docs posts.