An interview with Mathys & Squire Partner Stephen Garner was recently featured in ‘The flaw that landed Sanofi a win in the rare disease space’ by Life Sciences Intellectual Property Review. He provided commentary on Sanofi’s wins against Centogene at the European Patent Office in cases for which he was lead counsel.
The cases concerned patents for monitoring and diagnosing Gaucher’s disease, a rare, inherited metabolic disorder, by tracking the levels of a biomarker. Ultimately, the Technical Board of Appeal revoked both patents on account of a lack of key information about how to obtain the antibodies necessary for detecting the biomarker.
In the article in LSIPR, Stephen Garner, who worked alongside Partner Alexander Robinson on the cases, shares his insights on the EPO’s approach to patent disputes and how they tackled the challenges which arose in these cases. His interview highlights how patent attorneys must view each case on its own merits. Although biomarkers are generally patentable at the EPO, in this instance, the biomarker was not a standard antigen, which called into question the use of immunoassays in the claims.
To read the full article click here.
