More on the Loring/Somers embryonic stem cell story

Further to an earlier post on IPBiz on an article on embryonic stem cells by Terri Somers of the San Diego Union-Tribune, investigation of the file wrapper of application 10/165,765 reveals other details. The '765 application was a continuation of application 9/199,703, which was filed on November 24, 1998, about 4 years earlier than the '765 application. A preliminary amendment in the '765 application was filed which cancelled the claims (as they appeared in the published application) and inserted different claims. The first new claim, claim 33, required that the cell line be genetically modified to lack a positive selection marker. On March 3, 2005, a notice of abandonment was mailed to CyThera, 3550 General Atomics Court, San Diego. Abandonment ensued because of a failure to respond to an Office Action mailed July 6, 2004.

A final rejection in the parent case (the '703 application) was mailed on January 8, 2002. An RCE was filed on July 8, 2002, but the applicant made no response to a nonfinal rejection in the RCE mailed on September 20, 2002, and the '703 application went abandoned on April 29, 2003.

As noted previously, Somers had made no mention of the attempts by Loring to file patent applications in the article by Somers titled --Embryonic stem cell pioneer chose to publish, not patent--. More to the point of the re-examination of the Thomson patents, Somers neglected to mention that Thomson DID DISCUSS the work of Bongso in Thomson's '780 patent, even though Loring did NOT discuss the work of Bongso in her '765 application. As IPBiz has noted before, it is sometimes what is NOT said that is most significant.