Affymetrix, Oxford Gene cut a deal

Affymetrix Inc. finished clearing away the underbrush of its patent dispute with Oxford Gene Technology Ltd., announcing late Friday that it had settled all pending litigation with the U.K. company. The companies dropped lawsuits in the U.S. and U.K. as well as patent interference proceedings in Europe, leaving AFFX with a license to Oxford Gene's technology.

Oxford Gene (Oxford, U.K.) had been claiming that its array intellectual property, including U.S. Patent No. 5,700,637, were infringed by AFFX's DNA microarray products. Oxford Gene also had contested AFFX's claims that the U.S. company had obtained a valid license to the patents through its purchase of the microarray assets of Beckman Coulter in 1999. Beckman Coulter had obtained non-exclusive rights to the technology in 1991 from the University of Oxford, which subsequently assigned the rights to Oxford Gene...