BioCentury
ARTICLE | Strategy

PEB: New ways to see the light

March 6, 2000 8:00 AM UTC

Litigation between PE Biosystems Inc. and rival sequencing equipment producer Amersham Pharmacia Biotech Ltd. last week moved one step forward as a California court accepted Amersham's definitions of disputed claims in U.S. Patent No. 5,688,648, a patent related to the use of energy transfer dyes that is licensed to Amersham. While Amersham's patent infringement claims wait to be addressed, however, PEB is on the way to replacing the disputed technology.

PEB incorporates energy transfer dyes in a number of its sequencing kits based on fluorescent technologies, including its Big Dye Terminator products, said President Michael Hunkapillar. The technology, he said, gets around a problem with using fluorescent dyes in sequencing: the need for a set of dyes with multiple emission spectra that still absorb light optimally...