Functional and renewable plant protein ingredients company Burcon NutraScience has announced that it has received a notice of allowance from the United States Patent and Trademark Office for an important and commercially strategic CLARISOY patent application.
The importance and strategic value of this patent derive from the numerous specific composition of matter claims that have been allowed. The composition of matter claims provide protection over the commercially valuable attributes of CLARISOY. This marks the first ever CLARISOY composition of matter claims to be allowed.
A notice of allowance from the United States Patent and Trademark Office is a written notification that a patent application has cleared internal review and will proceed to grant as a U.S. patent.
CLARISOY is Burcon’s proprietary soy-based protein, and is under exclusive license to ADM. ADM’s CLARISOY line includes a range of products for both low and neutral pH applications.
“Composition of matter patents are considered to be the most valuable type of patent because they cover any use of the claimed matter, regardless of the process by which it was produced or how it is being used,” said Johann Tergesen, Burcon’s president and COO. “So, unlike application or process patents where it can be more difficult to establish that an infringement has occurred, enforcing composition of matter patents simply requires that the matter in question demonstrates the same beneficial characteristics of the matter that is patent-protected. For CLARISOY, these characteristics, amongst others, are its unique solubility and transparency in solution, and absence of taste or smell.”
The company said that this new patent allowance reflects Burcon’s extensive investment in developing its intellectual property portfolio, which includes the full range of composition of matter, application and process patents and patent applications. Including the new CLARISOY patent, Burcon’s intellectual property portfolio will be comprised of 255 patents in various countries, with 52 in the U.S., as well as more than 450 active patent applications, including 85 in the U.S.
“This new composition of matter patent represents a major step in protecting the intellectual property that supports the unique competitive advantages of CLARISOY,” continued Tergesen. “Our patenting efforts will remain a major area of focus in 2014, as will be our continued pursuit of perfecting the science that makes our proteins already so exceptional.”
