Patent litigation
In January 2012, Sequenom entered a patent battle with competing companies, Ariosa and Natera, accusing them of infringing the "540 patent" .[9] The cases are Sequenom Inc. v. Natera Inc. 12-cv-0184, Sequenom v. Ariosa Diagnostics Inc., 12-cv-0189, U.S. District Court, Southern District of California (San Diego), and Ariosa v. Sequenom.
Verinatal Health and Stanford University later filed suit against Sequenom in a dispute over the 'Quake patent'. Verinata claims that Sequenom's lawyers sent it a letter in 2010 alleging that "'the practice of non-invasive prenatal diagnostics, including diagnosis of the Down Syndrome and other genetic disorders, using cell-free nucleic acids in a sample of maternal blood infringes' the '540 patent, as well as the claims of a pending United States Patent Application."[10] The '540 patent was invented by Isis Ltd. and expires in 2017.
Stanford University owns the Quake patents and licensing rights; Verinata is its exclusive licensee.[10]
In April 2012, Sequenom acquired two pending patents from Helicos Biosciences. In consideration for the sale and transfer of the purchased assets, Sequenom paid Helicos $1.3 million. The Helicos patent applications (US Patent application 12/709,057 and 12/727,824) cover methods for detecting fetal nucleic acids and diagnosing fetal abnormalities.[11]
In July 2012, The United States District Court denied Sequenom's motion for a preliminary injunction motion against Ariosa Diagnostics.[12]
In August 2013, The Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit vacated the District Court decision and remanded that case to the District Court.[13]
In the Ariosa litigation, the District Court (N.D.Cal.) held that the '540 patent was invalid because it claimed a natural phenomenon, the presence of cell-free fetal DNA fragments in maternal blood. On June 13, 2015, the CAFC affirmed the District Court's judgment.[14] Finally, on December 2, 2015, the Federal Circuit declined to rehear en banc.[15]
