ToolGen obtains ex parte PTAB appeal victory reversing examiner's rejections in CRISPR patent application

Client(s) ToolGen, Inc.

On June 22, 2020, Jones Day obtained a decision on behalf of ToolGen, Inc. at the United States Patent Trial and Appeal Board ("PTAB") reversing all of the examiner's obviousness rejections of the claims in ToolGen's U.S. Patent Application No. 14/685,510 (Appeal No. 2019-001990). The claims at issue relate to methods of using CRISPR/Cas9 in mammalian cells. ToolGen successfully appealed the examiner's rejections of the claims as allegedly being obvious over U.S. Publication No. 2014/0068797 (The University of California, the University of Vienna and Emmanuelle Charpentier and Jinek et al., (Science, 337, 816–821 (2012)), and additional secondary references. The PTAB concluded that "the evidence of record supports that there was a high level of uncertainty and unpredictability in the art and that the skilled artisan would not have had a reasonable expectation of successfully transitioning the CRISPR/Cas9 technology [from prokaryotic cells] to eukaryotic cells, e.g., mammalian cells as claimed."

ToolGen is a Korean biotech company focused on translating CRISPR/Cas9 technology in the therapeutics and ag-tech areas.