Personal Genomics takes PacBio dispute to Chinese court

Taiwanese biotechnology company  Personal Genomics is using California’s  Pacific Biosciences for patent infringement in China.

The complaint, filed Wednesday, May 20 at the Wuhan People’s Court, relates to PacBio’s flagship Sequel and Sequel II gene-sequencing platforms.

"PacBio has long been aware of our patents in these areas and is choosing to make and sell products incorporating our patented technology without authorisation," said Personal Genomics CEO Johnsee Lee.

Lee added: "In order to protect our IP from infringement, we are taking a step further in legal action against PacBio in China today. We will consider to follow up with more actions in the future to protect our innovation and company value."

The lawsuit marks the latest escalation in a long-running dispute between the two companies over gene-sequencing IP. Personal Genomics filed litigation against PacBio in a  Delaware federal court in September, with that complaint also alleging that the California company’s Sequel platform infringes Personal Genomics’ patents.

At the time, a PacBio spokesperson said: “We believe that the claims by Personal Genomics are without merit, and we will vigorously defend against the claims asserted in the complaint.”

Personal Genomics claims that PacBio approached it as far back as 2010, expressing an interest in the Taiwanese company’s s-TOP (Sequencing on Top of Photodiodes) technology, which Personal Genomics says forms the basis of what became the Sequel platform.

A planned $1.2 billion merger between PacBio and Illumina, another California-based genetics company,  collapsed in January when the two parties agreed to “mutually terminate” the deal.

This was, they said, due to the lengthy regulatory approval process and “continued uncertainty over the ultimate outcome”.

PacBio suffered another blow in March when a Delaware jury found three of its patents invalid after a separate  legal battle with Oxford Nanopore Technologies.

The California biotech pledged to appeal the ruling, and also criticised Oxford Nanopore for what PacBio called its “brazen attempts” to sway the jury by exploiting the COVID-19 pandemic.

PacBio CEO Michael Hunkapiller said Oxford Nanopore had attempted to “profit from the current coronavirus pandemic by incorrectly suggesting that if the jury voted in favour of Pacific Biosciences it would be impeding critical efforts to combat the COVID-19 outbreak”.

Oxford Nanopore rejected PacBio’s version of events and said the jury had recognised it as the “true innovator” in the field of nanopore sequencing.

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