MouseWIKIMEDIA COMMONS, RAMA
Last week (August 9) the Alzheimer’s Institute of America (AIA) dropped its lawsuit against the Jackson Laboratory of Bar Harbor, Maine, for patent infringement in the distribution of transgenic mouse models of early-onset Alzheimer’s disease, reports Nature.
The AIA, based in St. Louis, Missouri, first filed suit against the Jackson Laboratory and several other institutes and companies in February 2010. As the patent holder for the so-called Swedish mutation, which causes the disease in mice, the AIA allows non-profit research on its mouse models, but was concerned that the Jackson Laboratory was profiting from their sale of 22 mouse models--a patent infringement, Nature reported. In December, the Jackson Laboratory requested help from the National Institutes of Health (NIH) because much of its work to distribute ...
