NEW YORK – A jury in the US District Court for the District of Delaware on Tuesday determined that Guardant Health willfully infringed on patents held by TwinStrand Biosciences and licensed to the University of Washington.
In a court filing, the jury determined that Guardant infringed on US patents 10,287,631 and 10,760,127, both related to methods for lowering the error rate of massively parallel DNA sequencing using duplex consensus sequencing.
Guardant may be liable for damages amounting to $83.4 million, the jury determined.
TwinStrand and the University of Washington filed a lawsuit against Guardant in 2021 alleging that Guardant's Digital Sequencing Technology employs methods covered by patents related to a proprietary duplex sequencing method and that the infringement had been willful on Guardant's part.
Guardant said that it intends to file additional motions in both the US District Court for the District of Delaware and the US Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit.
"We strongly disagree with this decision and will vigorously appeal for its overturn," Helmy Eltoukhy, cofounder and co-CEO of Guardant Health, said in a statement. "We believe the ruling ignores the strengths and merits of our R&D and intellectual property, which we painstakingly developed for over a decade."
Guardant's share price was down approximately 9 percent to $22.22 per share in early morning trading on the Nasdaq.