Illumina sues Oxford Nanopore for patent infringement

Californian genetic analysis company Illumina has sued UK-based Oxford Nanopore Technologies, which develops nanopore sequencing products.

Illumina filed the lawsuits at the US International Trade Commission and US District Court for the Southern District of California.

The complaints, filed on Tuesday, February 23, concern two patents in the field of nucleic acid sequencing which Illumina licenses from the University of Alabama Research Foundation and University of Washington.

The patents are US numbers 8,673,550 and 9,170,230, and called “MSP nanopores and related methods”.

Illumina’s lawsuits focus on Oxford Nanopore’s MinION and PromethION products, which are “portable devices for molecular analyses”.

The MinION device plugs into a laptop or PC via a USB and has the capacity to analyse nucleic acids.

PromethION is a small benchtop system that allows for real-time biological analyses and large sample numbers.

Illumina claimed that it has made “substantial investments” in nanopore sequencing technology from the universities. The company said it filed the lawsuits to protect its investment and patent rights in the technology and is seeking all available remedies.