MELBOURNE, Australia--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Benitec Limited (ASX: BLT), (PINK:BNIKF), a world leader in expressed gene silencing for human therapeutics, is pleased to announce that the United States Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) has today indicated that it is issuing the Re-examination Certificate, the formal final step in the USPTO’s confirmation of patentability of claims in the key ‘099 Graham Patent [US Patent No. 6,573,099] “Genetic Constructs for Delaying or Repressing the Expression of a Target Gene”, the wide-ranging platform technology patent covering the use of expressed RNA interference (RNAi) in human therapeutic applications. This follows the pivotal decision of the USPTO Board of Appeal in October last year to reverse all previous rejections resulting from the extended patent re-examination process. The issue of the Re-examination Certificate is the final step in the re-examination process and ends a protracted chapter in Benitec’s history. The issue is crucial in re-establishing Benitec’s primacy in this important technology which has the potential to treat and cure a wide range of human diseases.
