NEW YORK (GenomeWeb) – Enzo Biochem today announced that it has received a favorable claim construction ruling that will govern 10 ongoing patent suits the firm has brought to defend three US patents.
The firm said the US District Court for the District of Delaware has adopted Enzo's proposed constructions for the majority of the disputed claim terms and rejected the defendants' argument that Enzo's US Patent No. 6,992,180 for phosphate-moiety labeled oligonucleotide reagents is invalid for indefiniteness.
The other patents Enzo involved in the suits are US Patent No. 7,064,197, which covers non-porous solid supports for fixed or immobilized nucleic acids, and US Patent No. 8,097,405, which covers sequencing processes using non-radioactive nucleotides or nucleotide analogs. Enzo has brought the lawsuits against Abbott Laboratories, Affymetrix, Agilent Technologies, Becton Dickinson, Gen-Probe, Hologic, Illumina, Life Technologies, Roche, and Siemens.
"The ruling today helps define the scope of the property rights for the technologies that Enzo has invented," the firm said in a statement. Enzo added that such rulings could inform many aspects of the cases, but "there can be no assurance of the ultimate outcome of any litigation."
Enzo announced a $7.1 million settlement with Luminex earlier this week regarding their legal dispute over the three patents.