Court partially grants disqualification of PacBio’s legal team
Genomics company’s in-house attorney removed from case over links with patent infringement case | Court denied plaintiff’s motion to disqualify entire legal team.
A motion to disqualify the in-house legal department at Pacific Biosciences from a case has been partially granted by the US District Court for the Northern District of California.
The disqualification motion was filed by Take2 Technologies and the Chinese University of Hong Kong, which is involved in a dispute with the genomics lab over a patent related to the study of epigenetics and the detection of modifications in DNA molecules.
Take2 and the university wanted to disqualify the entire in-house team but the court only ordered the disqualification of Yang Tang, who was previously an attorney at Take2’s law firm Perkins Coie for more than seven years.
The parties were also ordered to come to an agreement within 14 days on how to handle the disqualification.
Tang had worked on behalf of Take2 Technologies, including preparation for the present lawsuit against PacBio, and had evaluated the patent-in-suit.
In August 2022, Tang left Perkins Coie to work as a senior IP in-house counsel at PacBio.
Before accepting the position, Tang informed Perkins Coie of her intention not to be involved in any Take2-related matters and consulted with outside counsel.
PacBio also said Tang would not work on or discuss Take2 matters and would not receive any fees related to the case.
Despite these measures, a conflict of interest was raised by Take2 in December 2022 after it filed an infringement action against PacBio.
PacBio's legal counsel reaffirmed the screens in place and received no further complaints regarding their adequacy.
However, the conflict resurfaced when PacBio moved to transfer the case to the Northern District of California.
As a result, on September 20, 2023, Take2 filed a motion to disqualify PacBio's in-house legal department, leading to yesterday’s decision to disqualify Yang.
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