Singapore Patent No. SG 42669, entitled “Arachidonic Acid and Methods for the Production and Use thereof”, owned by Martek Biosciences Corporation has the dubious honour of being the first Singapore Patent revoked by the Intellectual Property Office of Singapore (IPOS) under Section 80 of the Singapore Patents Act.
By way of history, the SG 42669 Patent, a national phase application of PCT Application No. PCT/US96/00182 entered into national phase in Singapore on 2 July 1997 as Singapore application No. 9703038-1, and was subsequently granted on 30 March 1999.
The Patentee submitted amendments to the patent claims on 6 September 2006, pursuant to Section 83 of the Patents Act and rule 80(3) of the Patents Rules. The amendments were subsequently advertised on 30 October 2006 in Patents Journal No. 200610A without any further opposition and accepted after the prescribed opposition period. These amendments were allowed as they did not result in the specification disclosing any additional matter nor did they extend the protection conferred by the Patent.
Cargill International Trading Pte. Ltd. filed an application with the IPOS to revoke the Singapore Patent, alleging that the patent was invalid as the claims were not novel and inventive.
Initially, the Singapore Patent Registrar instructed for the SG 42669 patent to be re-examined to determine the validity and patentability of the invention. Just before the re-examination was conducted, Martek had submitted amendments to narrow the claims. However, the Examiner found that the amended claims failed to overcome the novelty and inventive step objections and indicated in his report that he is of the view that amended claims 1, 3, 12-13, 15-19 lack novelty and inventive step while amended claims 2, 3, 35 and 36 lack only inventive step. Therefore, the Examiner in his report concluded that SG 42669 lacked novelty and inventive step, and suggested that it should be revoked.
In view of the result of the re-examination decision, the Registrar ruled that SG 42669 was invalid.
Our Regional Offices in Singapore, KASS Regional IP Services Pte. Ltd., can assist you with any request or enquiry that you may have on any South East Asian IP matters. Please do not hesitate to contact our Singapore Office at ipr@kass.com.sg.
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