21st October , 2009

Goal Zero, a Utah firm gets 600,000th U.S. patent
The U.S. Patent Office awarded its 600,000th design patent to a Utah company, Goal Zero, a subsidiary of Provo Craft and Novelty. The patent related to a battery system that works with a solar briefcase to recharge the system.

A ceremony was held at the Patent Office campus in Alexandria, Va., to mark the landmark occasion, where David Kappos, the Under Secretary of Commerce for Intellectual Property presented the patent to the Spanish Fork-based company officials.

Sen. Orrin Hatch, R-Utah, who spoke on this occasion, applauded Goal Zero and Provo Craft and Novelty as fine examples of small businesses which offer 70 percent of all jobs in America.

Mischa Barton in trademark battle with Handbag Company
Mischa Barton a TV actress is in a dispute with a Gold Coast-based Australian handbag maker which uses her name.

Barton wishes to trademark her name, signature and logo in Australia but Mischa Accessories in Queensland has opposed Barton's efforts to register her trademark with IP Australia.

The Gold Coast handbag firm is fighting a losing battle to stop Barton's efforts to protect her name.

Neither Mischa Accessories manager Mervill Allen nor Barton's Melbourne-based trademark lawyers would comment on the case. Trademark lawyer Trevor Choy said the number of trademark oppositions had risen sharply in Australia in the past two years, indicating an increased aggression by companies in protecting their turf.

VoIP patent challenged by Electronic Frontier Foundation
The Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF), a civil liberties organization has discovered a spurious patent, and has approached the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office with the proof to invalidate the patent. The patent relates to voice-over-Internet protocol (VoIP) that could affect the implementation of new VoIP technologies.

EFF, an organization that works to protect rights in the digital world, filed a re-examination request to the U.S. Patent and Trademark office, stating discovery of a prior patent that would invalidate a patent which has been granted to a communications company named Acceris. Acceris was granted a patent that describes how voice over IP technology can be used to make calls to and from traditional analog telephones.

Cindy Cohn, the EFF's legal director, said "Bogus patents like this one highlight the problems with our current patent system.” The EFF as part of its Patent Busting Project has been challenging several frivolous patents. The project has been successful in getting seven patents, invalidated, narrowed, or re-examined by the U. S. Patent Office.

Athera receives Allowance of Two Key Patents from EPO
Athera Biotechnologies AB, an atherosclerosis R&D company which develops new products for treatment of cardiovascular disease (CVD), will be granted two key patents related to the Company's IP on its two pharmaceutical compositions Annexin A5 and PC-mAb by the European Patent Office.

Following consequent grant the patents will be registered in the designated European countries.  Annexin A5 is used for the prevention of plaque rupture, as well as use of PC-mAb for the treatment of atherosclerosis and prevention of ischemic cardiovascular disease.

PC-mAb, is developed by Athera in association with Dyax Corp. in Boston, USA and has the potential to enable a "theranostics" approach in prevention of cardiovascular disease, is on the market and provides an easy-to-use ELISA kit (CE-marked) for quantitative analysis of anti-PC in human blood.

Athera's Annexin A5, the recombinant protein is developed for prevention of plaque rupture and athero-thrombosis through binding of the protein to endothelium. Annexin A5 is proposed for the treatment of patients with Acute Coronary Syndrome and who are at risk for Myocardial Infarction. Athera has an agreement with Richter-Helm BioLogics GmbH & Co. KG in Hamburg, Germany, for the process development of the product.

U.S. patent rights to PIKAMAB to develop theragnostic product
PIKAMAB, a biopharmaceutical company, has secured exclusive rights to two issued U.S. patents from Hospital for Special Surgery, New York. PIKAMAB is developing Lupus TherasightTM, a novel theragnostic product which helps in the drug development process and patient treatment protocols in the areas of lupus and lupus nephritis.

The U.S. patent 5,830,652 provides methods for determining severity of lupus and lupus nephritis by correlating to the functional polymorphisms in FcGR genes and the U.S. patent 7,022,476 provides the use of FcGR-2B promoter polymorphisms to assess the occurrence and susceptibility patterns of lupus in humans.

Dr. Vijay Ramakrishnan, Founder and CEO of PIKAMAB mentions that Lupus Therasight is a proprietary approach to stratify patients based on the FcGR-3A, 2A, 3B, and 2B polymorphisms. “Lupus Therasight is an important step forward in pharmacogenetics and the application of human genetic variation to personalized medicine,” said Dr. Robert P. Kimberly, Professor of Medicine at the University of Alabama at Birmingham and Director of the UAB Comprehensive Arthritis, Musculoskeletal and Autoimmunity Center who is also a co-inventor of the U.S. Patent 5,830,652.

Patent Related to Genetic Testing for Inflammatory Bowel Disease granted to Prometheus
Prometheus Laboratories Inc., a specialty pharmaceutical and diagnostic company has been awarded U.S. patent, entitled "Genes Involved in Intestinal Inflammatory Diseases and Use Thereof," which covers genes useful in the detection of inflammatory diseases, including NOD2 gene mutations which are associated with susceptibility to Crohn's disease.

Crohn's disease is a chronic disorder which results in inflammation of the digestive or gastrointestinal tract; symptoms of this disease include diarrhea, abdominal pain, fever and rectal bleeding. This disease is estimated to affect between 400,000 and 600,000 individuals in North America.

NOD2 gene mutations have been demonstrated to play an important role in the development of Crohn's disease, an inflammatory condition of the digestive tract that can lead to a variety of symptoms and often takes years to diagnose," said Henry Pan, M.D., Ph.D., Chief Scientific and Medical Officer of Prometheus. "This patent provides important protection for us as we continue to develop innovative products to help physicians diagnose and treat gastrointestinal diseases through individualized patient care."

Prometheus has exclusive, worldwide rights to the methodology for identifying NOD2 gene mutations under an agreement with Fondation Jean Dausset - Centre d'Etude du Polymorphisme Humain (CEPH).