Agilent Sues Twist Bioscience
The Agilent complaint also states: “After leaving Agilent, Leproust then targeted and poached key employees with the skills and knowledge of Agilent’s trade secrets, proprietary instruments, and methods necessary to synthesize high-quality oligos and collections of oligos of a length, complexity, and fidelity previously unmatched by any company other than Agilent.” Dr. Leproust worked at Agilent for 13 years, according to the complaint. Twist competes with Agilent in the oligo synthesis market, providing oligo libraries and gene assembly services. Agilent has invested $21 million in synthetic biology firm Gen9 and provided it with starting material for gene assembly, according to the complaint.
Santa Clara, CA 2/3/16; San Francisco, CA 2/4/16—Agilent Technologies has filed suit against Twist Bioscience, its CEO Emily Leproust, PhD, and 20 unnamed defendants. Filed in California Superior Court in Santa Clara County, the complaint alleges breach of contract, breach of the duty of loyalty and misappropriation of trade secrets. According to the complaint, Dr. Leproust, who served as Agilent Genomics’s director of Research and Development, Applications and Chemistry, before resigning in April 2013, “secretly laid the groundwork for a theft of Agilent technology, beginning on or before February 2012,” including registration of domain names and contact with venture capitalists. The suit seeks to enjoin use of the trade secrets, recover misappropriated trade secrets, enjoin the defendants from obtaining any further commercial advantage from the misappropriation, and recover actual and punitive damages. In a statement, Twist wrote, “On February 3, 2016, Agilent Technologies filed a complaint against Twist Bioscience and one of its founders, Emily Leproust, PhD. Agilent’s claims are baseless and without merit, and Twist Bioscience intends to defend itself vigorously against them. Typical of much larger, less innovative companies, Agilent’s actions reveal an obvious attempt to stifle competition. Twist Bioscience believes that the marketplace is the best place to determine winners and losers.”
