St. Louis, MO; Huntsville, AL- Sigma-Aldrich and Oxford BioMedica have filed suit in US District Court against Open Biosystems. The suit alleges that Open Biosystems’ products, including the Lentiviral shRNAmir Library, infringe two patents covering lentiviral-based systems for the delivery of foreign DNA to mammalian cells that Sigma-Aldrich exclusively licensed for research use from Oxford BioMedica in October 2005. “Sigma-Aldrich has made significant investments in creating the most comprehensive portfolio of intellectual property to allow our customers freedom to operate in the cutting-edge arena of RNA Interference,” said Shaf Yousaf, president of Sigma-Aldrich’s Research Biotechnology Business. Open Biosystems, which said its RNAi products are covered under licenses from the Broad Institute of MIT and Harvard, stated that the claims are unfounded and that it plans to vigorously defend itself. Open Biosytems Chief Technology Officer Troy Moore stated, “We conduct our business on the highest plane and in a way that results in genomic materials being made available to the research community. It is our belief that there is a greater value in making technologies broadly available to the research community.”