gradalis playing hardball or business as usual, page-24

on the other hand, this could be a good thing.

as they now have the benefit of patent protection for their bi-shrna method, they'll be much better positioned to start commercial discussions with the prospective big pharma partners.

thus they'll also therefore have a better position for negotiating terms with licencers (including Benitec) for use of the ddRNAi and siRNA aspects of their patent.

and additionally they'll now also know exactly where they stand from patent protection position.

this patent enables them to exclude others from using bi-shRNA, unless they agree to its use.

it does not claim ddRNAi (method for shRNA silencing), but rather just states their invention is an enhancement of it, as do thousands of other 'novel' shRNA patents.

the only company that can put the knockers on people using basic shRNA is the holders of Graham '099, or their exclusive licensee.

there's an interesting paper by Ulrich Bodner on the RNAi Landscape, dated 2005. It gives a bit more perspective on the importance of the Graham patent, why it's now well on it's way back to pre-eminence (even if the ASX market doesn't know it). Despite the many novel (eg: Gradalis) and not so novel (eg: Allele Biotech) claims to shRNA, there can only be 1 ddRNAi cornerstone patent in RNAi.

google the following to locate it (link not allowed by HC - it's an SS link, top item returned)

"rna interference landscape ulrich bodner"