Case: Patents/Anticipation & Obviousness (P.T.A.B.)

The Patent Trial and Appeal Board determined that challenged claims of The Johns Hopkins University’s patent directed to anti-cancer therapies that block immune system checkpoints, including the programmed death-1 receptor, are unpatentable as anticipated by and obvious over prior art, in an inter partes review by Merck Sharp & Dohme LLC. According to the board, the challenged claims are anticipated by and obvious over various combinations of prior art, including a phase 2 study of MK-3475 in patients with microsatellite unstable tumors, an article titled “Neo-Antigens Predicted by Tumor Genome Meta-Analysis Correlate with Increased Patient Survival,” and an article titled ...