Geneoscopy said Friday that it has petitioned the US Patent and Trademark Office for inter partes review challenging the patentability of Exact Sciences’ patent No. 11,634,781, which is at the heart of a lawsuit filed by Exact against Geneoscopy last November.
Geneoscopy said it moved to dismiss the suit in its entirety in December. The company’s new inter partes review petition argues that the claims of the ’781 patent, titled “Fecal Sample Processing and Analysis Comprising Detection of Blood,” are not inventive.
Exact’s patent describes the preparation of stool samples for colorectal cancer testing, which includes removal of one portion of a fecal sample, adding a buffer to prevent denaturation of blood proteins, performing a test to detect these blood proteins in the sample portion, and then stabilizing the remaining stool sample for further genomic testing.