EPO invalidates Pacific Biosciences patent in Oxford Nanopore dispute

The European Patent Office (EPO) has revoked a patent held by a US biotechnology company, Pacific Biosciences, after its UK-based rival Oxford Nanopore Technologies challenged the validity of the patent.

Oxford Nanopore announced the news in a press release today, January 23. The EPO granted Pacific Biosciences the now-invalidated patent (EU number 304552) in 2016 for “methods for nucleic acid sequencing”.

The patent included claims to a single-molecule sequencing process wherein two strands of DNA are linked by a connecting nucleic acid.

The validity of the patent had been challenged by Oxford Nanopore.

In its decision, the EPO ruled that the claims to a single-molecule sequencing process were “unsupported in the application and that the application only supported a template-directed synthesis sequencing method”.

Oxford Nanopore’s statement said Pacific Biosciences was “unwilling to accept this change”, so the patent was revoked.

It added that the EPO’s decision is consistent with a recent finding by the US International Trade Commission to limit the claims of a related Pacific Biosciences US patent covering template-directed synthesis.

The decision comes less than a year after the two companies settled a lawsuit in Europe involving the ‘552 patent and another Pacific Biosciences patent (EU number 3170904) for “compositions and methods for nucleic acid sequencing”.

As part of the settlement, Oxford Nanopore agreed not to sell its 2D sequencing product products in the UK or Germany until the end of 2023.

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