A Medical Device Daily

Enzo Biochem (New York) reported that the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit (CAFC) has denied permission for an immediate interlocutory appeal, thereby allowing Enzo’s patent infringement lawsuit in Connecticut Federal District Court to go forward against Applera (Norwalk, Connecticut) and its Tropix subsidiary.

Enzo said the CAFC denied petitions requesting appeal from the Markman rulings issued by the Connecticut Court on Oct. 12, construing claim terms in six Enzo patents asserted against Applera and Tropix, thus allowing Enzo’s infringement case to go forward.

The alleged infringing products include Applera’s Applied Biosystems’ DNA sequencing products and systems as well as services. The patents in suit are U.S. Patent Nos. 5,328,824, 5,449,767, 5,476,928, 4,711,955, 5,082,830, and 4,994,373, which relate generally to methods and materials for detecting nucleic acid sequences.

The suit was originally filed in 2004 (Medical Device Daily, June 10, 2004).

According to Enzo’s counsel, the Markman decision, on which the denied petitions for appeal were based, adopted substantially all of Enzo’s constructions of key patent claim terms.

As previously stated by Dr. Elazar Rabbani, CEO of Enzo, “this ruling paves the way for Enzo to establish infringement by defendants’ sequencing products and systems, including its TaqMan genotyping and gene expression assays, and the gene expression microarrays used with its Expression Array System.”

Enzo Biochem is engaged in the R&D and manufacture of products based on molecular biology and genetic engineering techniques, and in providing diagnostic services to the medical community.

The company’s labeling and detection products for gene sequencing and genetic analysis are sold to the life sciences market. The company also holds a patent covering a method and materials for correcting point mutations or small insertions or deletions of genetic material that would allow for editing and correcting certain abnormalities in genes.