Almost a year after a licensing dispute between antibody manufacturers Biosite and Xoma turned litigious, the two parties last week announced that they had agreed to resolve their differences out of court. The happy ending to the dispute comes a bit late, however, for Large Scale Biology, which was forced to terminate its business relationship with Biosite for fear of getting caught up in litigation. For now, LSBC officials say it’s too early to comment on whether they’ll consider buying antibodies again from Biosite. Following is a summary of how Biosite and Xoma resolved their differences:
• Xoma will receive a royalty-free, irrevocable, and perpetual license to practice Biosite's “Dower” patents (on multi-chain antibody phage display).
• Biosite will receive a royalty-free, irrevocable and perpetual license to utilize Xoma's bacterial cell expression technology for production of antibodies as well as for the development of new antibody products. This license also will allow Biosite to transfer antibodies to its Biosite Discovery partners.
• Xoma will have the right to present an agreed number of targets to Biosite and receive expression libraries including screened high-affinity antibodies.