Agilent Wins Patent Appeal
In 2006, the EPO upheld the patent after the patent claims were amended. Agilent appealed this decision because, according to the company, the patent remained vague and too broad. At the latest hearing, the EPO rejected Affymetrix’s proposed amendments. Illumina was also a party to the opposition.
Santa Clara, CA 7/25/12—Agilent Technologies has announced that the European Patent Office (EPO) has rejected the claims of and revoked Affymetrix’s EP 0853679 entitled “Expression Monitoring by Hybridization to High Density Oligonucleotide Arrays.” The ruling is the result of an appeal by Agilent, Combimatrix and Clonediag of a previous decision. The case dates back to 2003. According to Agilent, it opposed the patent due to its breadth, in particular the broad use of the term “control probe” in connection with gene expression microarrays. “The ruling allows customers to continue using established workflows and protocols, including control probes, without having to worry about potential patent infringement,” stated Robert Schueren, Agilent vice president, Genomics.
