Genomics Giants Accused of Misappropriating Sequencing Technology

Case: A trio of medical researchers are accusing Illumina, Thermo Fisher Scientific and Affymetrix of stealing the zip code sequencing technology they developed. The trade secret theft and fraud lawsuit claims, among other things, that the peer reviewer of the grant proposal the researchers submitted to the National Cancer Institute for their technology obstructed the grant and tried to get Affymetrix, the firm for which he was chief technology officer, to re-patent the idea. The suit also contends that the founders of Illumina misappropriated and submitted patent claims for the technology and incorporated it into the firm’s own SNP genotyping array and AmpliSeq reagents. Significance: This story has a lot of tentacles. Many of the same zip code sequencing technology patents at the center of this case were also involved in the recently settled infringement lawsuit brought by Thermo Fisher Scientific against Illumina. So, stay tuned…