NEW YORK – Oxford Nanopore Technologies disclosed Tuesday that it has filed an ex parte application in the US District Court for the Northern District of California to serve subpoenas on Complete Genomics, Innomics (formerly known as BGI Americas), MGI Americas, and other entities to support a lawsuit that it intends to file in the courts of England and Wales.
According to a regulatory filing, Oxford Nanopore said it plans to sue BGI Tech Solutions, BGI Group, BGI, Beijing Genomics Institute at Shenzhen, MGI Holdings, and MGI Tech in England for breach of contractual obligations, common law obligations of confidence, and duties under the Trade Secrets Regulations 2018. Oxford Nanopore also said it will file an entitlement claim to a license of certain patents.
Oxford Nanopore said it "does not believe BGI's nanopore-based sequencing technology is able to be used in commercial products around the world without infringing or misappropriating the group's substantial portfolio of proprietary rights."
Named CycloneSeq, BGI's nanopore sequencing technology was developed and recently unveiled by BGI Research, a unit of BGI Group.
As previously reported, BGI Group, formally named BGI Shenzhen, has established a new subsidiary called Hangzhou BGI Xufeng Technology that holds the IP related to CycloneSeq. Earlier this year, BGI Xufeng granted the exclusive rights to commercialize and distribute CycloneSeq globally to BGI Group-affiliate MGI Tech.
On Monday, MGI officially announced the launch of two nanopore sequencers based on the CycloneSeq technology: CycloneSeq-WT02 and CycloneSeq-WY01. According to MGI's website, CycloneSeq-WT02 can accommodate two flow cells that can run independently while CycloneSeq-WY01 operates one.
MGI said the CycloneSeq-WT02 sequencer will be open for order in select countries later this year through MGI's commercial channel while CycloneSeq-WY01 will become commercially available in the first half of 2025. MGI did not immediately respond to a request to comment on which countries the sequencers will be available in.
The impending lawsuit from Oxford Nanopore is likely to further hamper the BGI affiliates' attempts to penetrate Western markets. On Monday, the US Congress passed the Biosecure Act, which specifically targets Chinese biotech companies, including BGI Group, its affiliate MGI Tech, and MGI subsidiary Complete Genomics, aiming to cut off federal funding from these entities.
Oxford Nanopore, BGI Group, MGI Tech, and Complete Genomics declined to comment on the pending litigation.