Summary judgment rulings issue in DNA sequencing dispute
LadaTech, LLC v. Illumina, Inc. and Solexa, Inc., Civ. No.09-627a-SLR, January 24, 2012.
Robinson, J. Defendants’ motion for summary judgment of invalidity and expiration is denied. Plaintiff’s motion for summary judgment of no anticipation by certain references is granted. Defendants’ motion for summary judgment of noninfringement is granted in part and denied in part.
The disputed technology relates to DNA sequencing. A hearing was held 11/4/11 and trial is to commence 2/21/12. Defendants contend that “pre-TruSeq” and Tru-Seq forked adapters and “Nextera” products used alone or with “cluster generation” products cannot infringe. Defendants’ non-infringement motion is denied as it was based on defendants’ proposed claim construction of “double strand linker” and the court adopted plaintiff’s proposed construction. Nextera products were acquired by defendant after the close of document production and are not at issue. Damages are limited to infringing products. Defendant’s cluster generation products cannot infringe alone, and plaintiff fails to provide evidence of customers’ use of particular kits with such products. Summary judgment of non-infringement is granted with respect to these products. Defendants’ argument that the patent expired due to failure to timely pay the maintenance fee was rejected under Federal Circuit precedent where the PTO accepted a deficiency fee payment. Defendants’ written description argument is rejected for failure to provide evidence that a person skilled in the art would not have understood that the inventors had possession of one or more primers in the claimed method. The court grants summary judgment of no anticipation.
