NEW YORK – Tecan has sued Invitae, ArcherDx, Integrated DNA Technologies, and Qiagen for allegedly infringing on patents related to nucleic acid enrichment and high-throughput sequencing methods.
Tecan Genomics, formerly known as Nugen Technologies, is named as the plaintiff in two separate lawsuits filed late last week in the US District Court for the District of Delaware. In one, it claims that Invitae, ArcherDx, and IDT (a Danaher company) infringed upon Patent Nos. 10,036,012; 10,876,108; 9,546,399; 11,098,357; and 11,725,241.
In a separate filing, Tecan claims that Qiagen infringed upon the same patents, except for the '399 patent.
The '012 and '108 patents relate to targeted nucleic acid enrichment and sequencing library generation methods, while the other patents relate to methods for identifying duplicate reads.
Tecan asserts in the first complaint that its technology underlies what Invitae, ArcherDx, and IDT refer to as their Anchored Multiplex PCR (AMP) target enrichment technology, which is found in Invitae's Personalized Cancer Monitoring (PCM) service and in ArcherDx's LiquidPlex, VariantPlex, and FusionPlex kits. Invitae sold its portfolio of Archer NGS research-use assays to IDT in late 2022, two years after having acquired ArcherDx. It retained the use of the AMP technology in its PCM service.
In its second suit, Tecan also asserts that Qiagen became aware of Tecan's technologies while conducting due diligence as part of an attempt to purchase NuGen in 2013. That deal was not finalized and Tecan contends that Qiagen instead acquired Tecan competitor Enzymatics in 2014 and began commercializing products that incorporated the allegedly infringed patents.
Tecan acquired NuGen in 2018.
Tecan has asked in each case for a jury trial, damages to be awarded, and injunctions against the defendants barring further infringement. A judge has not yet been assigned to either case.