Alnylam Announces United States Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) Issues Patent Covering RNAi Therapeutics for the Treatment of Hepatitis B Virus (HBV) Infection

Alnylam Pharmaceuticals, Inc. (Nasdaq:ALNY), a leading RNAi therapeutics company, announced today that the United States Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) has issued a new patent (U.S. patent no. 8,618,277, or "'277 patent") in the company's McSwiggen patent estate. The McSwiggen patent estate broadly describes chemical modifications of RNAi therapeutics needed to achieve "drug-like" properties in siRNA, the molecules that mediate RNAi. Specifically, the '277 patent includes claims that the company believes are critical for the development of RNAi therapeutics for the treatment of hepatitis B virus (HBV) infection. This patent is held exclusively by Alnylam and is not licensed to any third parties. The McSwiggen patent estate comprises a core component of Alnylam's overall intellectual property (IP) estate for the advancement of RNAi therapeutics, and was recently obtained through the company's acquisition of Sirna Therapeutics from Merck.

"We are pleased with the USPTO's decision to issue the '277 patent from our McSwiggen patent family, a key component of the IP estate we recently obtained through our acquisition of Sirna Therapeutics from Merck. Our '277 patent has broad, sequence-independent claims on chemically modified siRNAs which we believe are critical for the development and commercialization of RNAi therapeutics for the treatment of HBV infection," said Laurence Reid, Ph.D., Senior Vice President and Chief Business Officer of Alnylam. "Our IP estate remains a cornerstone in our efforts to advance RNAi therapeutics to patients in need. In the case of the '277 patent, we intend to maximize the value of this newly issued IP solely through the advancement of ALN-HBV -- our GalNAc-conjugated siRNA targeting the HBV genome for the treatment of HBV infection -- where we expect to select our Development Candidate by this year's end and to file an investigational new drug application at or around year-end 2015."

http://online.wsj.com/article/PR-CO-20140612-905682.html

Catalyst Files Patent for Next-Generation Technology Assisted Review Based on 'Reinforcement Learning'

 Catalyst Repository Systems -- a pioneer in developing secure, cloud-based software to help corporations and their law firms take control of e-discovery, compliance and regulatory matters -- today announced it has applied for a patent on the type of continuous learning capability it invented for its next-generation technology assisted review (TAR 2.0) platform, Insight Predict.

Described in the patent application as "reinforcement learning based document coding," Catalyst's TAR technology is able to continuously learn from actions taken by the review team throughout the review process. With reinforcement learning, certain actions -- such as coding a document as responsive or not or adding additional documents -- enable the system to continue to grow "smarter" in its ability to select relevant documents.

What is Reinforcement Learning?

Reinforcement learning differs from older TAR 1.0 systems which require training by a high-level attorney. This expensive and time-consuming approach requires the senior attorney to first review and code an initial training set of randomly selected documents. With Catalyst's reinforcement learning technology, the full review team can begin right away. As reviewers' judgments are fed back into the system and new documents added, the system's selection and ranking of relevant documents continuously improves.

A new, peer-reviewed study by two leading experts in e-discovery validates the effectiveness of continuous learning technologies in e-discovery. In a paper they will present at the Association of Computing Machinery Special Interest Group on Information Retrieval (SIGIR) international conference in July 2014, "Evaluation of Machine-Learning Protocols for Technology-Assisted Review in Electronic Discovery," Gordon V. Cormack and Maura R. Grossman conclude that non-random training methods using continuous active learning "require substantially and significantly less human review effort" and yield "generally superior results."

http://www.marketwatch.com/story/catalyst-files-patent-for-next-generation-technology-assisted-review-based-on-reinforcement-learning-2014-06-11

Unify Wins 2014 World Trademark Review Industry Award

 Unify today announced the company's in-house counsel team was named a winner in the 2014 Industry Awards presented by World Trademark Review (WTR), the world's only independent international magazine dedicated exclusively to trademark law and practice.

The winners were announced on May 13, 2014, during theInternational Trademark Association's annual meeting at the Happy Valley Racecourse in Hong Kong. The event was attended by more than 200 senior in-house counsel from nominated companies and representatives from a number of prominent law firms.

"Trademarks are a key corporate asset and those tasked with protecting and enhancing the value of these critical rights contribute directly to their company's success," saidTrevor Little, editor of WTR. "Yet, too often trademark counsel are unsung corporate heroes and it is vitally important that the work they undertake is recognized. All of this year's shortlisted teams and individuals represent the best in class. This made judging the awards a very difficult process and the winners really do represent best practice in the trademark industry, and deserve special recognition for their exceptional achievements."

http://www.broadwayworld.com/bwwgeeks/article/Unify-Wins-2014-World-Trademark-Review-Industry-Award-20140611#.U5hhCnKSyIo

IPO to open OPD to public in June

The heads of the world’s top five intellectual property offices confirmed the time frame for opening up the One Portal Dossier to the public during their annual conference held in Busan last week.

The meeting, held for the first time in South Korea in six years, was a follow-up to a conference in June 2013 when intellectual property offices including the Korean Intellectual Property Office agreed to the principle of making the OPD more accessible for the public.

The OPD is a website where patent examiners can freely share patent applications and other relevant information of patent offices in top patent-filing regions ― Korea, Japan, China, the U.S. and Europe.