Global leader in sequencing and array-based technologies, Illumina, Inc. ILMN, along with its wholly-owned subsidiary, Verinata Health Inc., has lodged a patent infringement suit against Premaitha Health plc in the High Court of Justice, Chancery Division, Patents Court in the United Kingdom.
The patents relate to the use of cell-free fetal DNA for non-invasive prenatal testing (NIPT) and are exclusively licensed to Illumina from Sequenom, Inc. and The Board of Trustees of Leland Stanford Junior University.
Per the suit, Premaitha’s IONA Test has been accused of patent infringement, including its use of next-generation sequencing to analyze cell-free fetal DNA from a sample of maternal blood.
Illumina has a bit of history when it comes to infringement claims. In Dec 2014, the company had announced an agreement to settle all pending infringement claims and other disputes between Sequenom and Verinata Health.
As a result, both the companies combined their owned and in-licensed intellectual property related to NIPT, including patents which remained the subject of interference proceedings.
In April last year, Illumina had filed a fresh patent infringement suit against Ariosa Diagnostics, Inc. The suit held Ariosa’s Harmony Prenatal Test guilty, including its use of digital analysis of selected regions (DANSR).
Notably, this was not the first time that Illumina had filed a lawsuit against Ariosa. In 2012, Verinata had initiated legal action against Ariosa and Laboratory Corporation of America Holdings LH in the federal court in the Northern District of California.
NIPT, which tends to analyze cell-free fetal DNA found in maternal blood, is a major breakthrough in prenatal screening and testing for trisomy 21 and a few other fetal chromosomal aneuploidies.
Hence, it is not uncommon for companies in the NIPT space to file patent suits against each other and Illumina is no exception. However, these kinds of lawsuits generally take considerable amount of time to be resolved and in majority of the cases, they are settled out of court. It will be interesting to observe whether this Illumina lawsuit follows a similar trajectory, going forward.
Zacks Rank
Currently, Illumina has a Zacks Rank #2 (Buy). Other top-ranked medical stocks at the current moment include Affymetrix AFFX and Abaxis ABAX. Both the stocks sport a Zacks Rank #1 (Strong Buy).
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