Supreme Court denies Sequenom petition

In a blow to the diagnostics industry, the U.S. Supreme Court declined to review a lower court's decision that had invalidated a patent owned by Sequenom Inc. (NASDAQ:SQNM) covering a prenatal diagnostic test. The company had asked the court to review the case and the patent eligibility criteria established in its 2012 Mayo Collaborative Services v. Prometheus Laboratories Inc. decision, which the lower court had used as rationale to invalidate Sequenom's patent. Multiple life sciences companies and industry groups had filed briefs supporting Sequenom.

In 2013, the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California ruled that Sequenom's U.S. Patent No. 6,258,540 was invalid because its claims did not add enough to a natural phenomenon to make them patent eligible. The patent covered prenatal diagnosis with nucleic acid analysis used in its MaterniT21 Plus laboratory-developed test. ...