Posts Tagged: "medical diagnositcs"

6 Years Later: The Effects of the Mayo Decision on Diagnostic Methods

2018 celebrates the six-year anniversary of one of the most important Supreme Court decisions of the modern era. On March 20, 2012, the Court handed down its ruling in Mayo v. Prometheus Laboratories. The decision was understood immediately to be a break from the immediate past, a product of the Court’s intention to clarify patent eligibility for a new era of biotech, pharma, and life science technologies. The Court hoped it would help clarify eligibility issues raised by new technologies that the drafters of Title 35 § 101, 102, and 103 hadn’t envisioned, but it’s done the opposite. Six years later, eligibility is harder to discern than ever, especially for diagnostic method claims.

Abbott Labs acquires large Alere patent portfolio in $5.8 billion deal, increasing diagnostic lineup

Abbott Laboratories (NYSE:ABT) of Chicago, IL, is poised to surge ahead in the global point-of-care medical diagnostics industry by acquiring Alere Inc. (NYSE:ALR) of Waltham, MA, in a $5.8 billion deal which values Alere at $56 per share. According a recent statement made by Abbott CEO Miles White to investors, the move will push the company’s annual diagnostic sales up to $7 billion. The acquisition is simply the latest major move in the medical device industry, a sector which saw more than 1,000 deals pending or completed last year for a net worth of $58.9 billion, according to statistics published by Bloomberg Business.

Canon already with more than 300 patents in 2016, pursues plastics and photoacoustic imaging tech

Our latest survey of patents issued recently to Canon include a couple of imaging technologies related to medical diagnostics, such as is the case with the imaging innovation outlined within U.S. Patent No. 9230319, entitled Method of Reconstructing a Biological Tissue Image, and Method and Apparatus for Acquiring a Biological Tissue Image. It protects a method of reconstructing an image of a sample through the use of multiple measured spectra obtained by measuring respective regions of the sample; the method involves acquiring an image through utilization of an intensity distribution in the regions of at least one peak in each of the measured spectra as well as a classifier. This technique is useful in the examination of biological tissues to determine the presence of cancer.

Ariosa v. Sequenom: Petitioning the Federal Circuit to Reverse Course on Patent Eligibility

This is a really important question both with respect to biologics and other interventions and also as the Federal Circuit does work with the Supreme Court’s body of precedents. We have basically two principle points. One is that in our view the Federal Circuit has to do a better job rationalizing and reconciling two different sets of precedent. One is the set of modern cases and the second is an older case that the modern cases embrace, Diamond vs. Diehr, which as we understand it adopts exactly the opposite rule from the Federal Circuit in this case, which is that the combination is what has to be new not the individual processes. And then second we believe that we have a case that fits squarely within what the Supreme Court intended to remain patent eligible after those more modern cases. So we filed an en banc petition and we thought that there would be amicus support for sure. But what we didn’t expect, to be honest, was the outpouring of interest and support that we received.

Johns Hopkins Seeks Patent on Surgical Robot Systems

The medical research university is heavily involved with developments for medical diagnostics, as many of the following applications show. One patent application describes a system of searching for similar images within a medical imaging database to aid in diagnosing issues. Another patent application would protect a system of developing a personalized library of tumor development indicators for cancer patients to determine if a cancer recurrence is forming. A third application discusses a method of analyzing albumin/peptide compounds in a patient’s plasma to determine if a blood flow issue exists. Other patent applications we feature here focus on improvements to surgical procedures. One patent application explains a new development for specialized surgical robotics and an improved interface for surgeon control. Finally, we feature a patent application discussing a minimally invasive surgical treatment for obesity using a gastric sponge.