NEW YORK – Qiagen said after the close of the market on Friday that it has reached a settlement with Becton Dickinson in a patent infringement lawsuit related to Qiagen's NeuMoDx 96 and NeuMoDx 288 clinical PCR systems.
Under the terms of the agreement, all pending patent and non-patent claims have been resolved between plaintiff BD and codefendants Qiagen and former officers of NeuMoDx, with BD receiving a one-time, lump-sum payment of $53 million, Qiagen said. The agreement includes general releases of all parties with no admissions of wrongdoing.
The settlement ends a lawsuit originally filed by BD in 2019 in the US District Court for the District of Delaware alleging that NeuMoDx, then an independent company but under a merger agreement with Qiagen, had infringed on several US patents covering technologies surrounding the use of microfluidic cartridges for molecular diagnostic assays and instruments.
NeuMoDx filed counterclaims and an affirmative defense, namely that certain patents were invalid and unenforceable under US patent laws due to prior art and obviousness. The Patent Trial and Appeal Board previously ruled that the challenged claims of the patents and specifically a multi-lane microfluidic device would not have been obvious at the time.
In the interim, Qiagen completed its acquisition of NeuMoDx and appealed the patent challenge ruling, and last week the USPTO responded and affirmed the original ruling.
Qiagen said that the settlement does not affect its outlook for net sales and adjusted earnings per share for the fourth quarter and full-year 2021. On Wednesday, the company upgraded its outlook for full-year 2021 based on stronger-than-expected Q3 results. Qiagen expects revenues to decline approximately 9 percent at constant exchange rates and adjusted EPS of at least $.60 at CER in the fourth quarter. For 2021, it expects revenues to grow at least 15 percent at CER and adjusted full-year EPS of at least $2.48.