CAMBRIDGE, Mass.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Alnylam Pharmaceuticals, Inc. (Nasdaq: ALNY), a leading RNAi therapeutics company, announced today that the United States Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) has maintained key claims in the company’s KSP RNAi patent (US Patent No. 7,718,629) in interference proceedings. The interference was declared on February 28, 2011, between Alnylam’s patent and a patent application (US Patent Application No. 11/807,872) filed by Protiva Biotherapeutics Inc., a subsidiary of Tekmira Pharmaceuticals Corporation, which included a pending claim to an siRNA sequence that was identical to one described in the earlier filed Alnylam patent. The next phase of the interference proceedings will examine the respective priority date for each of the parties’ claims consistent with current U.S. patent law’s “first to invent” statute.
