NEW YORK (GenomeWeb) – Guardant Health and Foundation Medicine said yesterday that they have settled a false advertising lawsuit that the companies had filed against each other last year.
Under the terms of the settlement, all claims and counterclaims will be dismissed with prejudice. In addition, the companies agreed to create a process to quickly resolve any future advertising-related disputes.
The lawsuit, filed by Guardant in June of 2017 in the US District Court for the Northern District of California, related to advertising for Foundation Medicine's FoundationACT liquid biopsy genomic profiling assay. Guardant claimed that Foundation's marketing materials made false statements about its own Guardant360 test.
Foundation responded to the lawsuit in August, denying the allegations and asking for the claims to be dismissed. In addition, it filed counterclaims in September, accusing Guardant of spreading misinformation about its own test and Foundation's tissue-based assays in its advertisement.
In conjunction with the settlement, Foundation and Guardant also agreed to establish a working group to explore the development of standard formulas and definitions for the validation of genomic profiling assays.
In a statement, Guardant Health's CEO Helmy Eltoukhy and Foundation Medicine's CEO Troy Cox both said they are pleased with the resolution of the suit.