Posts Tagged: "Illumina"

The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit (CAFC) has reversed a district court decision finding certain claims of two patents covering prenatal DNA testing patent ineligible. The CAFC held that “the claimed methods utilize the natural phenomenon that the inventors discovered by employing physical process steps” and thus were patent-eligible. The patents at issue in the case acknowledge but are not related to the patented invention held invalid in Ariosa Diagnostics, Inc. v. Sequenom, Inc., 788 F.3d 1371, 1373 (Fed. Cir. 2015). The opinion was authored by Judge Lourie, with Judge Reyna dissenting.

A jury verdict awarded more than $26 million to a group of plaintiffs including San Diego, CA-based gene analysis firm Illumina, Inc. The jury found that Ariosa Diagnostics infringed upon two patents, awarding $15.7 million in lost profits to Illumina and nearly $11 million in lost profits to Verinata Health… In the recent jury verdict, both Illumina and Verinata lost on willful infringement arguments made against Ariosa during the trial. However, the validity of both patents was confirmed after being challenged by Ariosa during the case.

On Friday, January 19th, a magistrate judge in the District of Delaware entered a memorandum opinion ordering Cornell University to enter into arbitration proceedings to resolve a dispute with licensee Life Technologies Corporation. The dispute arises out of a patent infringement case in which both parties are plaintiffs after Cornell felt that it was fraudulently induced into a settlement agreement with Life Technologies and Illumina, Inc., the defendant in the case.