By Doug Macron
AlCana Technologies last month denied that its researchers violated non-compete agreements with their former employer, Tekmira Pharmaceuticals, as part of a legal claim filed against it by that company.
In a complaint filed this week with the US District Court for the Northern District of California, Catalyst Assets alleges that the SOLiD system infringes US Patent No. 5,858,731, entitled "Oligonucleotide libraries useful for producing primers."
The judge denied Gene Codes' request for discovery in a suit it filed against the Office of the Chief Medical Officer of New York and granted the city's motion for summary judgment in the case.
Mirrx said the agency's decision may mean it will have to wait as long as two years before it can secure the patent. During that time, it may be unable to secure additional investments needed to stay in business, the company said.
According to the amended complaint, University of Utah's Brenda Bass had “so well-defined” the concept at issue that it "could have been reduced to practice by someone with ordinary skill in the art without further research.”
Alnylam charged Tekmira with wrongly using trade secrets to bolster its own drug delivery technology-development efforts and to file a patent application on Alnylam's phase I liver cancer drug.
