MENLO PARK, Calif.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Pacific Biosciences of California, Inc. (NASDAQ:PACB) today announced that the Board of Patent Appeals and Interferences of the United States Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) has rendered a decision in a previously announced patent interference provoked by Pacific Biosciences related to single molecule sequencing. The decision cancels all patent claims by Life Technologies Corporation involved in the interference.
In today’s ruling, the Board entered judgment against Life’s U.S. Patent No. 7,329,492 (the ‘492 patent), holding that all of the Life claims that were involved in the interference are unpatentable to them. The ‘492 patent was issued to Visigen Biotechnologies prior to that company’s acquisition by Life Technologies. Pacific Biosciences claimed priority based on an application filed 20 months prior to the Visigen application. The Pacific Biosciences patent application is part of an intellectual property portfolio acquired from LI-COR Biosciences in 2008. Pacific Biosciences announced in March 2009 that it was named Senior Party by the USPTO in the patent interference case based on its earlier filing date.
In reaching its decision to cancel the Life claims, the Board agreed with Pacific Biosciences' assertion that the Life Technologies patent specification does not adequately disclose the claimed invention. While the Board determined that neither party was entitled to the broadest claims presented, they denied Life's request that a subset of Pacific Biosciences' claims be found unpatentable.
“The Patent Office has, in essence, stated that these claims of the Life Technologies patent never should have been issued, and we completely agree,” said Hugh Martin, Chairman and Chief Executive Officer of Pacific Biosciences. “While the claims in this interference were not related to our PacBio RS sequencing system, we believe that it is important to protect and defend the full scope of our intellectual property portfolio.”
About Pacific Biosciences
Pacific Biosciences’ mission is to transform the way humankind acquires, processes and interprets data from living systems through the design, development and commercialization of innovative tools for biological research. The company has developed a novel approach to studying the synthesis and regulation of DNA, RNA and proteins. Combining recent advances in nanofabrication, biochemistry, molecular biology, surface chemistry and optics, Pacific Biosciences has created a powerful technology platform called single molecule, real-time, or SMRT™, technology. SMRT technology enables real-time analysis of biomolecules with single molecule resolution, which has the potential to transform the understanding of biological systems by providing a window into these systems that has not previously been open for scientific study.
This press release contains forward-looking statements. Forward-looking statements may contain words such as "believe," "may," "estimate," "anticipate," "continue," "intend," "expect," "plan," the negative of these terms, or other similar expressions, and include the assumptions that underlie such statements. These statements are subject to known and unknown risks and uncertainties that could cause actual results to differ materially from those expressed or implied by such statements, including but not limited to risks discussed from time to time in documents we have filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission, including the risks identified under the section captioned "Risk Factors" in our final prospectus relating to our initial public offering filed pursuant to Rule 424(b) under the Securities Act of 1933, as amended, on October 27, 2010. All forward-looking statements are based on management's estimates, projections and assumptions as of the date hereof. We undertake no obligation to update any forward-looking statements.