Who Invented Nobel Winner’s Cancer Patents Divides Fed. Cir.

A three-judge panel of the Federal Circuit appeared split at oral argument on Dana-Farber Cancer Institute’s claims that a Nobel Prize winner’s fellow researchers should be named on his cancer immunotherapy patents.

Japan-based Ono Pharmaceuticals Co., which owns the six patents, and patent licensee Bristol-Myers Squibb Co. appealed after a lower court ruled that the researchers—Gordon Freeman and Clive R. Wood—should be listed as co-inventors with Tasuku Honjo.

U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit Judges Alan D. Lourie and Kara F. Stoll had hard questions for the drug companies.

“The district court found that all three doctors ...