Biotage Responds to CEM Corporation Patent Dispute

Biotage issued a statement in response to a recent announcement from CEM Corporation, a competitor of Biotage, about a patent issue with Biotage.

“The so called ‘patent dispute’ relates to Biotage’s filing of opposition against certain patents of CEM in Europe (Germany, France, Italy and Great Britain) and Japan, because Biotage believes that the patents as originally granted give CEM a broader protection than CEM is entitled to,” the statement reads.

According to the Biotage statement, “In April 2013 the Japanese Patent Office found that CEM’s patent, relating to microwave assisted solid phase peptide synthesis, is invalid. Also the European Patent Office found that the scope of the corresponding European patent should be restricted. The decisions by both patent offices were taken in response to the requests filed by Biotage. The decisions are open to appeal by both parties.”

Biotage states that its instruments for microwave-assisted organic chemistry have been used in the scientific community since the late 1990s, before CEM filed patents in that field.

“Biotage of course respects third party patent rights. I am surprised that CEM claims that we are in a dispute and even more that they claim to have won. This is an ongoing discussion on what the fair scope of these patents is, if any. The CEM patents concerned do not cover Biotage’s line of instruments for microwave assisted peptide synthesis. All synthesis protocols preinstalled in the Biotage instruments are outside the patents, even as originally granted. The situation is the same with the corresponding US patents,” says Torben Jörgensen, CEO of Biotage in the statement.