Biotech climbs on patent reexamination news

Shares of ConjuChem Biotechnologies (TSX: T.CJB, Stock Forum) climbed 20% to nine cents Tuesday after the company announced that the U.S. Patent & Trademark Office has issued an Action Closing Prosecution in the reexamination of a patent assigned to Amylin Pharmaceuticals (NASDAQ: AMLN, Stock Forum).

The company says Patent No. 6,924,264, entitled "Modified Exendins and Exendin Agonists," was issued in August 2005 and that the action closing prosecution “rejected all the claims for obviousness and/or lack of novelty.”

ConjuChem says it requested a reexamination of 19 claims in the patent due to obviousness and/or lack of novelty, and notes that an order granting reexamination was issued by the USPTO in October 2007 and the initial office action was issued in January 2008 in which all 19 claims for which reexamination was requested were rejected.

The company says the inter partes reexamination in the USPTO does not involve any of ConjuChem's patents. The company has a number of issued patents in the insulinotropic peptide field including a composition of matter patent for PC-DAC:Exendin-4.

"We are very pleased by this outcome, which will provide further comfort to potential partners regarding any competing intellectual property claims in the exendin-albumin therapeutic field," said Mark Perrin, president and CEO of ConjuChem.

On the Bullboard, horla47 said:

I believed that this was going to happen, but its always a relief to see this being thruth. Still, there is one huge news pending that will have an impact on the conduction of phase III, and it's the expected approval of the one-week dosage of Byetta. This should be accepted by the FDA within a few months if not a few weeks (was expected to be in the first quarter of 2009 before). This will have a huge impact on CJB if accepted by the FDA. So during the next weeks, follow AMLN on the Nasdaq to know were CJB will be heading[sic].