BioCentury
ARTICLE | Strategy

Illumina's line in the sand

March 19, 2007 7:00 AM UTC

Illumina Inc. said a jury's decision that the company infringes five patents held by fellow microarray competitor Affymetrix Inc. is a mere bump in the road, as the disputed products in the suit are based on older assays that have represented less than a third of revenues since the end of 2005. The key to ILMN's staving off IP challenges and maintaining its stake in the genetic research tools market may depend on how its more recent genotyping and gene expression assay platforms - such as its Infinium II assay - differ materially from their predecessors.

While such assays are not addressed by the existing suit, they may be susceptible to future patent infringement suits, according to Jay Flatley, president and CEO of Illumina (ILMN, San Diego, Calif.)...