NEW YORK (GenomeWeb) – The US Patent and Trademark Office has denied an attempt by Foundation Medicine to invalidate a patent held by Guardant Health.
In a decision issued June 5, the Patent Trial and Appeal Board denied Foundation Medicine's request to institute Inter Partes review for US Patent No. 9,598,731.
Foundation Medicine had challenged the patentability of 17 claims of the '731 patent on the grounds that they were obvious due to prior art.
According to the PTAB judges, the "Petition and evidence in this record do not establish that there is a reasonable likelihood that Petitioner would prevail in challenging claims 1–17 of the ’731 patent based on the grounds discussed..."
The '731 patent is at issue in two infringement suits filed in the US District Court for the District of Delaware by Guardant, one against Foundation Medicine and another against Personal Genome Diagnostics (PGDx).
Foundation Medicine has alleged in a countersuit that the four patents-at-issue in the suit are invalid "due to over-breadth" and unenforceable for inequitable conduct, an allegation also made by PGDx.