ImClone Systems Inc (formerly IMCL)

[biophud]

Dew-thanks for your comments. I understand the need to be defensive in order to prevent others from developing competing products. However, I would have thought that a patent coving a specific antigen would be broad enough to cover multiple antibody production methods (phage-display, CDR-grafted, transgenic animals, ribosome display, etc.). My view is that antibody-generation technologies are different roads to the same end. I'm not sure what the courts have allowed or will allow, but IMO using an alternative method to generate an antibody to a known antigen does not seem like an especially novel invention. Also, the humanized CDR-grafted approach that IMCL mentions in the patent would seem to be covered by PDLI's patents.

biophud