Chemical & Biotechnology

Scope is won in the examples.

Chemical and biotech claims are constrained by what the specification actually supports. Genus scope, written description, and enablement are decided by the working examples and the data — which is why this work belongs to people who can read the data.

Published patents in this area: 322
Professionals: 12

Our chemical and life sciences practice covers specialty chemicals and formulations, polymers and advanced materials, catalysis and process chemistry, and biotechnology including molecular biology, protein engineering, and diagnostics.

The practice also handles the materials questions that arrive through our other groups — semiconductor process chemistry alongside device work, and biomaterials alongside medical devices. Battery, fuel cell and electrolyte chemistry claimed as part of the cell is handled in Green Technologies.

Genus claims and the data that support them

A broad genus claim is only as good as the examples supporting it. Written description and enablement in this field are decided on whether the specification demonstrates possession across the claimed range, and courts have narrowed what a small number of examples can carry.

The practical consequence is that filing strategy and experimental strategy are the same conversation. Which examples get run before filing, and which structural variants they span, determines the scope available afterwards — and no amount of prosecution skill recovers scope the data never supported.

Formulations, processes, and where to claim

The same innovation can often be claimed as a composition, a process of making, or a process of using, and the three have very different enforcement profiles. A composition claim is detectable in a competitor's product; a process-of-manufacture claim frequently is not, though it may reach imported goods under §271(g).

Choosing among them is a commercial decision about how the invention will be copied, made at drafting time on incomplete information.

Evidence

Patents we drafted in this area

Patents the firm prosecuted, drawn from its own published listing and from the USPTO's attorney-of-record index. A record, not a claim.

All patent listings

12,658,547Electroplated metal layer on a niobium-titanium substrate
12,644,806Method and device for ultra-rapid cryo-fixation of a sample for microscopic studies
12,624,382Beta-lactam compounds and methods of use thereof
12,624,368Nucleic acid molecules and dual-functional peptides having antiviral activity and delivery activity, compositions and methods thereof
12,613,229Mobile communications device with electronic nose
12,600,764Antigen-binding proteins targeting coronavirus (COV) variants
12,599,673Techniques for enhancing the selectivity and efficacy of antimicrobial and anticancer polymer agents
12,590,290Method for treating and modelling hearing loss