NuCana: TBA of EPO rules European Patent 2955190 not valid

NuCana announced that, following a hearing on March 24, the Technical Board of Appeal of the European Patent Office issued an oral judgement that NuCana’s European Patent 2955190 is not valid. The TBA reversed the previous decisions of the EPO’s Examination Division which issued NuCana’s ‘190 patent and of the EPO’s Opposition Division which upheld this patent in 2021. In July 2022, the Regional Court of Dusseldorf issued a judgement that fully endorsed the decision of the EPO’s Opposition Division. The TBA considered a part of Claim 1 of the ‘190 patent to lack an inventive step and did not allow NuCana to overcome this finding by an appropriate amendment of the claims in line with established case law of the EPO. "This aspect of the decision is particularly disappointing," said Dr. Thorsten Bausch, Senior Partner at Hoffmann Eitle, who represented NuCana at the hearing. This follows on from the judgement of the Patents Court of England and Wales handed down on March 21, 2023 which held that the ‘190 patent was invalid in the UK. Neither of these decisions affect the patent protection on any of NuCana’s anti-cancer ProTides, which are covered by separate patents that were not involved in this litigation.