A court ruling on Monday, in a patent case involving a new anticancer drug with an infamous back-story, could turn out to be a financial windfall for an Israeli research institution. The ruling says that three scientists at the Weizmann Institute of Science deserve the patent for inventing the process used in making Erbitux, a drug for treating colon cancer that ImClone Systems makes.

ImClone’s founder and chief executive is serving jail time for his role in an insider-trading scandal over information related to Erbitux that also involved Martha Stewart, the home-décor guru. ImClone had been licensed the right to the process by Aventis Pharmaceuticals Inc., a giant drug company that until now owned the patent.

In 2003 the Weizmann Institute’s licensing arm, the Yeda Research and Development Corporation, sued ImClone and Aventis, asserting that its scientists deserved the patent. In her ruling on Monday, Judge Naomi Reice Buchwald, of the U.S. District Court in New York, concurred. In the 140-page ruling, the judge said the two companies had “engaged in a series of actions designed to keep Yeda and the Weizmann scientists in the dark,” according to an article by the Associated Press.

Lawyers for Yeda praised the ruling and said they would seek to license the patent to ImClone and other companies. ImClone said it would appeal.

ImClone also continues to contest another patent-infringement lawsuit involving a university. In 2004 it was sued by the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and its licensee, a drug company called the Repligen Corporation (The Chronicle, May 21, 2004).