It is reported that Illumina, the global gene sequencing overlord, announced last month that it had filed a patent infringement lawsuit against Latvian Huada Zhi Zhi, a subsidiary of Huada Group, in the Dü sseldorf District Court. According to the complaint, the sequencing products manufactured by Huada Zhi Zhi, including BGISeq-500, MGISeq-2000 and related chemical reagents, infringed the patent number EP 1 530 578 B 1. This patent covers Illumina's unique technology of sequencing while synthesizing.
It is worth noting that in Illumina official website, a 20 10 announcement showed that Huada Group had purchased its HiSeq 2000 sequencing system from Illumina. At that time, Zhang Xiuqing, vice president of Shenzhen Huada Gene Research Institute, said that this was an important step for Huada Group to provide basic sequencing facilities for scientists around the world.
Huada Zhi Zhi is a research and development and manufacturing enterprise of sequencing instrument under Huada Gene Group. At present, Huada Zhi Zhi ranks the top three in the mainstream second-generation sequencer in the world, and there is fierce competition between the two sides in the production and sales of sequencer. On the other hand, the sequencing service section of Huada Group used to be a big customer of Illumina, but now with the breakthrough of Huada Zhi Zhi in the second-generation sequencer, Huada Gene no longer purchases from Illumina, but instead purchases products made in Huada Zhi Zhi.
In response to the interface news, Huada Group said that Huada Group is confident in its own technology. Huada Zhi Zhi, a subsidiary of Huada Group, invested more than 5 billion yuan in R&D funds to realize the original patent layout of sequencing technology, breaking the market monopoly in the upstream of gene sequencing industry. Regarding patent disputes, we are actively responding to the lawsuit and will take corresponding legal actions. It is not excluded that we will use counterclaims and other legal weapons to safeguard our legal rights.
In addition, it is reported that the sales of related products of Huada Zhi Zhi at home and abroad have not been affected.
The Latvian subsidiary of Huada Zhi Zhi is preparing to sell in Europe. The disputed product comes from Complete Genomics previously acquired by Huada Zhi Zhi. Before being acquired by Huada Zhi Zhi, Illumina had several patent litigation disputes with Complete Genomics, but they were all settled on 20 13.
Interface news was found in the official website of the European Patent Office, and both patents were applied in 2003. According to insiders, generally speaking, the patent term is 20 years, and competitors may start sales preparation one or two years before the expiration. The above-mentioned person said that at present Illumina should be some small technology that accuses a sequencing reagent. These technologies are "not difficult, but necessary for sequencers and cannot be circumvented". The above-mentioned insiders believe that due to the complexity of technology, it is difficult to predict what Illumina accused this time and how it will be proved.
According to public information, a German company, QIAGEN GmbH, was involved in the lawsuit of Illumina for patent EP 1 530 578 B 1.
Another person in the industry said that in principle, the underlying technology of both products is the same, but the realization path is different.
According to Jiang Hui, Chief Operating Officer of Huada Zhi Zhi, the core technology used by Huada Zhi Zhi Sequencer is called DNBSEQ, which is based on single-strand rolling circle amplification technology. Another technology used by other companies is to amplify PCR on chip based on bridge PCR technology, and these two technologies are relatively different in short reading and long high-throughput sequencing.
In addition, initiating patent litigation with each other is a normal event in the field of gene sequencing. Illumina has filed patent lawsuits against many enterprises all over the world, but it has also been counterclaimed by candace flynn and Columbia University.