8 November 2013Americas

Syntrix celebrates US damages ruling

A federal court has upheld a ruling that biotech company Illumina should pay rival Syntrix $115 million and an 8 percent running royalty rate for patent infringement.

The US District Court for the Western District of Washington found in March that Illumina had infringed a patent covering “synthetic matrix and array technology”. Illumina’s BeadChip array products, which help with analysing genes, were the source of the infringement.

The San Diego-based company was fined about $96 million for infringement dating from 2005 to May 2012, but the award was later increased to account for sales from May 2012 to March 2013 – when the verdict was issued. Pre-judgement interest dating from 2005 was also added to the fine.

After the ruling, Illumina asked the court to review the verdict or sanction a new trial, as the the jury’s findings went against the “great weight of evidence” and the incorrect claim construction was applied, the company said.

But in a ruling on November 4, Judge Settle denied the request.

“The verdict is the result of seven citizens’ hard work and ... is supported by the evidence,” the judge said.

“With regard to the claim constructions, the court listened intently to each expert’s position on how one of ordinary skill in the art would interpret the ‘682 patent ... Dr. Metzker’s [for Syntrix] testimony was persuasive evidence that the court’s rulings were correct.”

Syntrix said this is the largest damages award in a patent case in Washington state history.

Jon Singer, principal at law firm Fish & Richardson, said it was an impressive verdict.

“This is a big award for the diagnostic industry. Patent rights in that area have, generally speaking, been under attack, so this jury award sends a good message that these areas of patenting are valuable.”

Syntrix’s ‘682 patent expires in 2019.

Neither lawyers at Bracewell & Guiliani (Syntrix) nor Osborn Maledon (Illumina) could be reached for comment.