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Nicholas C. Prairie

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Nicholas Prairie is an associate in the Litigation Department, and a member of the Life Sciences Patent practice. He works with life science and pharmaceutical clients of all sizes in the preparation and prosecution of patent applications.

Prior to joining Proskauer, Nicholas was an associate at another Boston firm, where he worked with corporate clients of all sizes. He drafted and prosecuted U.S. and foreign patent applications, and assisted in district court litigation and Inter Parte Reviews. Nicholas’s technical expertise includes small molecules, peptides, and protein conjugates.

Before law school, he worked as a chemist at Ipsen (Biomeasure, Milford, MA) where he synthesized a variety of pharmaceutically interesting compounds including; small molecules, peptides, peptide-drug conjugates, proteins, and protein-polymer conjugates. As a graduate student his research focused on natural product synthesis.

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There is no shortage of surprises and twists in the decade-long fight over the control of dominant IP in the CRISPR space.  The newest one is the self-revocation of two seminal CRISPR patents in Europe by the team led by two Nobel Laureates Emmanuelle Charpentier and Jennifer Doudna (aka “CVC”).  …

The Federal Circuit’s decision in Edwards Lifesciences Corp. v. Meril Life Sciences Pvt. Ltd., has garnered significant attention, especially concerning the application of the “safe harbor” provision under 35 U.S.C. § 271(e)(1). The Federal Circuit’s ruling, and the subsequent denial of Edwards’s petition for rehearing en banc, underscores the breadth of the safe harbor, putting to bed the question of whether “solely” means “only” in the context of the safe harbor.

Cell therapy products in the U.S. are estimated to be worth approximately $4.5 billion currently and expected to grow to over $30 billion in the next ten years. As market value increases litigation is bound to heat up.

Recently, Fate Therapeutics and the Whitehead Institute sued Shoreline Biosciences in the Southern District of California for allegedly infringing six patents directed to composition and methods relating to induced pluripotent stem cells (iPSCs) directly under 35 U.S.C. §§ 271(a) and (g), and for inducing infringement. Fate’s infringement theories included both literal infringement and infringement under the Doctrine of Equivalents. The court granted summary judgment of noninfringement to Shoreline for all asserted claims.