The US Patent and Trademark Office (PTO) is re-examining two currently issued US patents owned by the Institute Pasteur and the Universite Pierre et Marie Curie, and licensed to Cellectis .
The two patents belong to a family of thirteen issued US patents, which includes US Patent number – 7309605 and 6610545, that are being asserted against Precision.
Precision has filed requests seeking re-examination of US Patent 7214536 (536 patent) and 6833252 (252 patent). The request is based on the grounds that the claims of these patents are obvious in view of a variety of references, which had not been previously considered by the patent examiners.
On May 27, 2009, the PTO granted Precision’s requests and issued initial rejections of all 17 claims of the ‘536 patent’, and 18 of 19 claims of the ‘252 patent’.