“Illumina has filed a lawsuit against Ariosa Diagnostics and its parent firm, Roche Molecular Systems, for allegedly infringing one of its patents.
Illumina filed its suit Monday in the US District Court for the Northern District of California alleging that Ariosa is infringing its US Patent No. 7,955,794, entitled “Multiplex Nucleic Acid Reactions.” Specifically, Illumina believes that Ariosa’s microarray-based version of its Harmony Prenatal Test is infringing that patent.” Read more.
It’s not clear that this will make much of a difference. The existing patent litigations have been going on for years and everyone seems to be making plenty of money. But now that Ariosa and Natera are owned by deeper pockets, it will be interesting to see how far they are willing to go.
I don’t know, from a technical standpoint, how much more traction they’re going to get on the array based technologies? Does anyone?
Prenatal Information Research Consortium 