A Medical Device Daily

Neuralstem (Rockville, Maryland) reported that it has received notice that the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) has rejected all of the claims in the four StemCells (Palo Alto, California) patents it examined.

“The Patent Office has rejected on multiple grounds all of the claims in all four of StemCells’ patents that it examined,” said Richard Garr, Neuralstem president/CEO. “In accepting the reexamination months ago, the patent office was only ruling that, on its face, there was enough evidence to disallow the claims. Now after careful examination, the patent office has issued an official rejection of each of the claims in all four of the patents that StemCells attempted to assert against Neuralstem in its lawsuit. Importantly the patent office is rejecting the StemCells patents based on additional prior art references that were not even the focus of our reexamination request.

“We are pleased but certainly not surprised by the Patent Office’s rejection of all the claims in all the relevant StemCells patents,” Garr added. “We believe that the Patent Office has now correctly found that these claims should never have been issued in the first place.”

Neuralstem says its technology enables the production of neural stem cells of the human brain and spinal cord in commercial quantities, and the ability to control the differentiation of these cells into mature, physiologically relevant human neurons and glia.