This article has been updated with comments from Illumina.
NEW YORK (GenomeWeb News) – Complete Genomics today said that the US District Court for the Northern District of California has granted partial summary judgment in favor of the firm regarding certain claims in an ongoing patent infringement suit with Illumina.
The court decision stems from a lawsuit brought by Illumina against Complete Genomics in August 2010 alleging that Complete Genomics infringes Illumina's US Patent No. 6,306,597. That suit also includes claims that Complete Genomics was infringing US Patent Nos. 7,232,656 and 7,598,035. All of the patents in the suit cover DNA sequencing by parallel oligonucleotide extensions, the use of arrayed biomolecules in sequencing, and methods and compositions for ordering restriction fragments.
Earlier this year Judge Elizabeth Laporte of the US District Court for the Northern District of California issued a claims construction order only on the '597 patent, which Illumina had said was "favorable" to its case for the key terms in the litigation.
In the decision earlier this week, Laporte ruled that Claim 1 and dependent Claims 9, 10, 14, 15, 16, 17, 18, and 19 of the '597 patent are all invalid due to prior art. According to Complete Genomics, the remaining allegation in the lawsuit is that Complete Genomics infringes Claims 2, 4, and 5 of the '597 patent.
"Given the Court's prior claim construction order, Complete strongly believes that it does not infringe these Claims and intends to continue to vigorously defend itself," Complete Genomics said in a statement.
"We strongly disagree that any of the claims of our patent are invalid, and we intend to appeal the Court's ruling," Illumina President and CEO Jay Flatley said in a statement after the close of the market Thursday. "We believe that this patent
covers important and novel inventions that Complete Genomics has misappropriated."
In June Illumina filed a second suit against Complete Genomics alleging infringement of its US Patent No. 8,192,930, entitled "Method for sequencing a polynucleotide template."