This article, originally published on April 21, has been updated with additional information from Oxford Nanopore Technologies.
NEW YORK (GenomeWeb) – Oxford Nanopore Technologies said today that it has initiated legal proceedings in Europe against Pacific Biosciences, alleging infringement of intellectual property from Harvard University for which Oxford holds an exclusive license.
The company filed one lawsuit in the Patents Court of the High Court's Chancery Division in the UK and another with a court in Mannheim, Germany.
The patent, EP 1192453, is entitled "Molecular and atomic scale evaluation of biopolymers" and lists Daniel Branton, Timothy Denison, and Jene Golovchenko as inventors.
Oxford Nanopore declined to comment further on the action at this time. PacBio also declined to comment.
PacBio filed a lawsuit against Oxford Nanopore in March, alleging that the firm infringes on a patent PacBio holds related to single-molecule sequencing.