Good News For Antibody Patent Applications In Canada

Patentees in the antibody arts in Canada have long been dogged by policy-based objections to claims that seek protection that is broader than the example antibodies in their applications. Some of these objections were recently reviewed by the author in a paper "Antibody Examination Practice at the Canadian Patent Office: Immune to Change?" (Canadian Intellectual Property Review (2014), 29(2): 225-258). In a landmark decision, the Federal Court of Canada has upheld broad "use" claims including functionally defined antibodies.

Many patentees will know that even conservative sequence modifications in complementary determining regions (CDRs) are objected to because, in the view of the Canadian Intellectual Property Office (CIPO), undue experimental burden would be required to make candidate mutants and determine which ones maintain function. To sustain these objections, patent examiners point to decisions of the Commissioner of Patents dealing with applications from the