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Genetic Technologies Concludes Patent Lawsuit against US Firms

By a GenomeWeb staff reporter

NEW YORK (GenomeWeb News) – Genetic Technologies has concluded its lawsuit against several US companies filed in February 2010 that alleged patent infringement, the Australian company said Wednesday.

Separately, it also announced a settlement and licensing agreement with ViennaLab Diagnostics.

Genetic Technologies said it has secured A$14.5 million ($15.2 million) in licensing revenues since it filed its lawsuit in US District Court Western District of Wisconsin, and in a statement, CEO Paul MacLeman added that the firm's actions has enabled "our in-house efforts of pursuing new licenses to be optimally effective.

"The formalized IP monetization approach … has proved to be very predictable and continues to be an excellent source of non-dilutive funding of the company, enabling expansion of our cancer management strategy and product suite," he said, adding that the company plans to soon launch its BrevaGen breast cancer risk test in the US.

Last year, Genetic Technologies sued nine companies including Gen-Probe, Beckman Coulter, and Orchid Cellmark, alleging they infringed US Patent 5,612,179, titled "Intron Sequence Analysis Method for Detection of Adjacent Locus Alleles as Haplotypes," which relates to methods of analyzing non-coding DNA sequences.

Earlier this week, Genetic Technologies announced a settlement and licensing agreement with Orchid Cellmark covering the patent.

The company also said on Wednesday that it has settled with ViennaLab Diagnostics, based in Vienna, Austria and granted it a license. Genetic Technologies had alleged ViennaLab also infringed on the '179 patent, though it was not a defendant in the lawsuit filed a year ago in the US.

As part of the licensing agreement, ViennaLab was granted non-exclusive rights to a number of Genetic Technologies' patents related to its non-coding DNA technology. Financial and other terms of the deal were not disclosed.

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