RNAi Litigation

Judge Saris stated to the Plaintiff’s attorney at the end of this last ACT “You may prove to much” … I think hinting at invalidation of Tuschl II. If the plaintiff can prove that Dr. Bass invented siRNA in the spring of 2000 using as evidence her paper and slides from her meeting presentations that spring, wouldn’t this invalidate the Tuschl II invention which was reduced to practice in October or November of 2000 in Tuschl’s lab at Max-Planck? This would not, of course, be the goal of UUtah.

Dirk Haussecker raised this issue some time ago in a comment here:

“Even IF Dr. Bass had been in possession of the beneficial 3′ overhang feature in spring of 2000, i.e. before Tuschl understood his invention (got his cloning results and tested the 3′ overhung siRNAs for gene silencing), didn’t Dr. Bass choose to disclose her invention in public, without the filing of a patent application?

I therefore cannot imagine for Alnylam to settle in a way that it can be eventually interpreted by the USPTO as an admission that Bass had priority over Tuschl, as in my understanding of US patent law the Tuschl II patent application would be invalidated by such disclosure.”

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