Investigate the company that had "to court"

Recently, the United States Federal Court ruled that Life Tech infringed Enzo Biochem's patent and repaid $48.5 million in Enzo Biochem. According to reports, Enzo Biochem also sued GE Amersham, Roche Diagnostics, PerkinElmer, Agilent, and Affymetrix for this patent.

In the instrument industry affiliated to high technology, the most common reason for the company’s “reconciliation” is patent infringement, and the loss of a patent infringement case is often as high as tens of millions, and even a compensation of over 100 million yuan will be very tragic to the company. The price. Therefore, all major companies pay great attention to whether their patents have been infringed or whether they infringe others' patents.

In recent years, such lawsuits disclosed in related reports have occurred in the fields of mass spectrometry, chromatography, and life science instruments. For example, in mass spectrometry, in 2000, AB (now AB SCIEX) and MDS sued Micromass (now Waters) to court and complained that the related mass spec product infringed on its triple quadrupole technology. In 2001, the U.S. Federal Court ruled that Waters had lost and compensated AB and MDS for $47.5 million. In 2004, AB and MDS also filed a complaint against thermoelectricity (now Thermo Fisher) for the same patent. However, Thermo Fisheries affirmed that triple quadrupole mass spectrometry only accounted for less than 1% of the total thermoelectric power revenue and claimed that the TSQ series was a three-level quadrupole. Rod MS uses a completely different design without infringing the patent mentioned in the lawsuit.

In 2012, PerkinElmer sued Waters and Agilent to the court and accused the other party of infringing on the AOB ionization source related patents. PerkinElmer acquired AOB in 2009. In the end, Waters spent $3 million to resolve this patent dispute; Agilent and PerkinElmer patent disputes are still pending, and both parties have submitted relevant motions to the court.

In terms of chromatography, Waters and Agilent, two leading suppliers of liquid chromatography, have also been “to court”. In 2005, Agilent sued Waters in the United Kingdom, Germany, and France, and v. Waters Alliance HPLC used some of its pump technology to infringe Agilent's patents. In the United Kingdom, in 2006, Waters and Agilent reached a settlement on this case, and Waters paid A.E. £3.5 million as a one-time compensation. In the German lawsuit, after further appeals, in 2012, the German Federal Court made a ruling in favor of Agilent; the litigation in France reached the deadline, and there have been no reports of litigation results.

In life science instruments, there are many cases of such lawsuits. In the past two years, Illumina and Life Tech, the two giants of the sequencer, have paid nearly 100 million U.S. dollars for patent infringement. In 2013, Illumina was awarded compensation for $96 million for Syntrix Biosystems and $115.1 million for Syntrix for patent infringement. Life Tech was awarded compensation of Promega 52 million US dollars in 2012 in addition to the above-mentioned compensation of 48.5 million US dollars Enzo Biochem.

Another reason why the company “to court” is the brand battle. In 2011, Life Technologies sued AB SCIEX and its parent Danaher, accusing AB SCIEX of improperly using the “AB” brand, which violated the transaction agreement reached between Life Tech and Danaher last year. According to the agreement, AB SCIEX is only permitted to use the "AB" logo in areas related to the mass spectrometry business, excluding reagents, application software or consumables. As of now, the results of the case have not been publicly reported.

Another case that went to court due to the brand dispute was Shanghai Precision Scientific Instrument Co., Ltd. and Chengdu Kefa Instrument Co., Ltd. (Chengdu Kexin) and Shanghai Jingxue Science Instrument Co., Ltd. (Shanghai Jingxue). Shanghai Jing Xue registered the "Qianke" trademark. In 2012, the court ruled that the two defendants acted unfairly and was ordered to stop using the “Qianke” trademark, and the two defendants compensated the plaintiff for economic losses of RMB 150,000.

In addition, the instrument company also went to court due to a proxy dispute. In 2008, due to Anton Paar’s termination of its sales agreement with Swiss Huajia (now Dachang Huajia) in China, Japan, Singapore and Malaysia, Swiss Huajia sued Anton Paa for a total of 5.9 million Swiss francs. Compensation. In 2012, the International Court of Arbitration finalized its verdict, overturning the claim filed by Dachang Hua Jia, and DKSH could not appeal the verdict.