Washington, DC 3/26/10—The US Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit has affirmed the US District Court for the Northern District of California’s rulings in Applied Biosystems’ (Applera) (now Life Technologies) patent infringement suit against Illumina, Stephen C. Macevicz and Solexa regarding next-generation sequencing technology (see IBO 1/31/09, 4/30/09). In the first phase of the 2009 trial, the jury found that the defendants were the owners of US Patents Nos. 5,750,341, 5,969,119 (the ‘119 patent) and 6,306,597 (the ‘597 patent). In the trial’s second phase, the jury found that the plaintiff’s probes did not infringe claim 1 of the ‘119 patent, and that claim 1 was valid. Applied Biosystems had appealed the lower court’s denial of its motions for judgment as a matter of law or, alternatively, requests for new trials on ownership of all three patents and on the validity of the ‘119 patent. Illumina had appealed the court’s summary judgment that certain Applera products did not infringe claim 1 of the ‘597 patent, and the court’s order that claim 1 of that patent was invalid.