patent issues blt v nucleonics

With the refusal of the Federal Court of Appeals to hear Nucleonics appeal their legal challenge against the BLT 099 patent is now dead.

In 2005 Nucleonics patented its gene silencing technology in Australia and set out to challenge the validity of the Australian granted 099 patent. Their challenge failed and BLT patent was vaildated. So according to Australian law both the two sets of patents stand seperate and apart.

Now the battle in the USA rages on. In the intial round of the patent re-examination Nucleonics also lost its case. It was not until a second re-examination started up by Nucleonics that the USPTO found issues with the 099 patent and that still continues. IF this battle is lost then BLT is excluded from the U.S. market but what about the rest of the planet? Look at all of the legal relationships that BLT is setting up. Its U.S. partner Tacere Theraputics (BLT owns 5% plus roylaty stream from sales of product) has about US$150 million of potential milestone payments already stacked up and a whole host of other relationships are in place. That is a potential market of billions of people.