Federal Court Dismisses Quidel’s False Advertising Claims against Siemens

 Case: The nasty litigation between Quidel and Siemens continued with both sides accusing the other of false and deceptive advertising. The touchstone of the suit are ads run by Siemens referring for its TSI and TBI detection assay Immulite. The latest installment of the case raises the question of whether even if the statements in the ads were false, they influenced the decision of major lab customers LabCorp and Sonic/CPL to purchase Immulite rather than Quidel’s Thyretain qualitative assay.

 Significance: The Ninth Circuit Court of Appeal affirmed the lower court’s decision to dismiss Quidel’s claims. “There is no direct evidence in the record for which a reasonable juror could find that Siemens’ allegedly false statements were material to the decision-making processes of the two laboratory customers.” Both LabCorp’s and Sonic’s decision to switch from Thyretain to Immulite were based not on Siemens’ scientific presentations, press releases and marketing materials, but a comprehensive and rigorous internal validation process, the Court concluded decisions [Quidel Corp. v. Siemens Med. Sols. USA, Inc., 2021 U.S. App. LEXIS 30144, 2021 WL 4622504].