Illumina Files More Patent Infringement Lawsuits

Illumina continues to pile up the patent infringement lawsuits against Roche Molecular Systems and its laboratory subsidiary.

The San Diego-based Illumina filed a new suit in mid-May against San Jose, Calif.- based Ariosa Diagnostics, claiming the microarray-based version of its Harmony prenatal assay infringes on a patent for "multiplex nucleic acid reactions."

The Harmony assay tests for Down's Syndrome and other potential prenatal genetic issues and helps avoid the use of amniocentesis, which can place a fetus at risk of physical harm. Illumina offers a similar test under its verifi® brand. Ariosa has said the test relies on a proprietary methodology that focuses on cell-free DNA.

Illumina and its Verinata subsidiary have previously filed two other patent infringement suits against Roche and Ariosa, both of which are still pending.

There is some prior bad blood between Roche and Illumina. The latter rejected two hostile takeover bids from Roche's parent company in 2012, including one worth $6.7 billion. Illumina was later sued by one of its larger institutional shareholders for adopting a poison pill provision in order to thwart the takeover bid.

However, Illumina has been particularly aggressive in protecting its testing technology. It sued British firm Premaitha Health earlier this year, saying its prenatal test infringed on its patent in the United Kingdom. It also has sued Sequenom in the past, but late last year the two companies settled their litigation and agreed to pool their intellectual property in order to jointly develop new tests moving forward.

Takeaway: Illumina is ratcheting up pressure on Roche and Ariosa regarding its prenatal tests.