Federal Circuit upholds another ITC decision in 10X vs Bio-Rad
The US Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit has upheld a decision from the US International Trade Commission (ITC) that found 10X Genomics infringed on two Bio-Rad Laboratories gene sequencing patents.
In a consolidated appeal handed down on May 28, the circuit gave a precedential ruling that claims that 10X indirectly infringed on the Bio-Rad patents with its microfluidic chips.
Both Bio-Rad and 10X appealed part of the ITC ruling. Bio-Rad challenged the ITC’s decision that 10X did not infringe on its US patent 9,500,664 (‘664) with its ‘Chip GB’ product.
Conversely, 10X appealed the decision that it had infringed on Bio-Rad’s US Patents 9,636,682 (‘682) and 9,649,635 (‘635) with its GEM Chips.
Circuit Judges Alan Lourie, Timothy Dyk and Jon Newman upheld the ITC decision in relation to both appeals, claiming that both parties’ remaining arguments were “unpersuasive”.
Case history
The asserted patents were created from research conducted by QuantaLife and three of the inventors were QuantaLife founders Kevin Ness, Donald Masquelier, and Benjamin Hindson.
Bio-Rad purchased QuantaLife in 2011 for approximately $160m, acquiring the company’s patent rights and provisional patent applications, including the ’664, ’682, and ’635 patents.
Shortly after the acquisition, Hindson and Ness left the company to start 10X, with Masquelier joining shortly thereafter.
Since then, the two companies have been embroiled in several lawsuits over contended patent ownership and infringement.
In April, the Federal Circuit affirmed another ITC decision that ruled Bio-Rad had infringed on three 10X patents, denying Bio-Rad’s appeal that the patents were invalid.
The court rejected the argument by Bio-Rad laboratories that the company is a co-owner of the patents due to the inventors of the product—Benjamin Hindson and Serge Saxonov—still being employed at Bio-Rad when they signed certain provisions.
Did you enjoy reading this story? Sign up to our free daily newsletters and get stories sent like this straight to your inbox
Already registered?
Login to your account
If you don't have a login or your access has expired, you will need to purchase a subscription to gain access to this article, including all our online content.
For more information on individual annual subscriptions for full paid access and corporate subscription options please contact us.
To request a FREE 2-week trial subscription, please signup.
NOTE - this can take up to 48hrs to be approved.
For multi-user price options, or to check if your company has an existing subscription that we can add you to for FREE, please email Adrian Tapping at atapping@newtonmedia.co.uk