A recent U.S. Supreme Court decision could make it more difficult for the Wisconsin Alumni Research Foundation to defend existing stem cell patents that are now being challenged by two national groups and patent experts.
On Monday the court rejected an automobile brake patent requested by Teleflex Inc., because the court decided the brake, and the development of the brake, was too ""obvious.""
John Simpson, stem cell project director at the Foundation for Taxpayer and Consumer Rights, a consumer watchdog group in Santa Monica, Calif. that is challenging WARF stem cell patents, said this decision ""will make it harder for people who hold patents, such as WARF, to defend them,""
""It makes it more fair and equitable for people like us to challenge them, because the rules of obviousness have changed,"" he added
""You can't have a patent if it's obvious,"" Simpson said, ""and our contention is that WARF's patents for stem cells are, in fact, obvious.""
Simpson said that while James Thomson's and his team's breakthrough isolation of stem cells in 1998 was important, ""What he did was obvious to any skilled practitioner.""
WARF spokesperson Andy Cohn said the Supreme Court decision is ""much too complex to figure out what, if any, affect it will have on our future patents.""
Cohn said the decision was given on a case that had nothing to do with stem cells and is not at all relevant to future and current stem cell patents.
""The decision was about a gas pedal,"" he said. ""The difference in obviousness in a mechanical device and a life sciences invention is like night and day.""
However, Simpson said the Supreme Court decision is ""a legal case, where the underlying legal issues, in this case about gas pedals, relate to the same principles in the science of stem cells.""
He said this decision would have a ""substantial impact"" on the human stem cell patents WARF currently holds in the Patent and Trademark Office, adding that he feels WARF stem cell patents are being asserted ""aggressively"" in a way that is ""fundamentally damaging to stem cell research in the United States.""
According to Cohn, the U.S. Patent and Trademarks Office's rejection of three of WARF's five stem cell patents are only preliminary rejections, and the first steps in a multi-step process that could take years to complete.
""We're just going to go on with business as usual,"" Cohn said. ""It's a very complex opinion and we're still trying to figure out what it means.""
—The Milwaukee Journal Sentinel contributed to this report.
