Alnylam Pharmaceuticals Inc. (ALNY) announced that the U.S. District Court of the District of Massachusetts has ruled in favor of Alnylam and has denied Tekmira Pharmaceuticals Corp.'s (TKMR, TKM.TO) motion to dismiss certain claims and motion to disqualify Alnylam's counsel in an infringement suit filed in January 2012.
Alnylam stated that the infringement suit against Tekmira is based upon Alnylam's allegations that Tekmira has improperly provided lipid nanoparticle or LNP-formulated small interfering RNA or siRNA molecules to pharmaceutical collaborators.
The court has ruled that Alnylam has standing in suing Tekmira for infringement of several patents that Tekmira has exclusively licensed to Alnylam.
As alleged in the complaint filed in January 2012, Tekmira's activities are not protected under the exemption from patent infringement for drug development. Tekmira has allegedly infringed a number of issued patents related to siRNA and LNP technologies. Under Alnylam's contractual right to enforce Isis' patent U.S. Patent No. 7,695,902, Alnylam joined Isis to the suit as a co-plaintiff.
In addition, Alnylam said it has expanded its infringement action against Tekmira to include CA Patent No. 2,359,180. In a complaint filed today in the Federal Court of Canada, Alnylam alleges Tekmira is infringing this patent in its collaboration activities and in its own research and development efforts.
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