Life sciences company Bio-Techne has filed a lawsuit against Molecular Instruments in the pan-European Unified Patent Court, alleging patent infringement of its RNAscope in situ hybridization (ISH) technology.
In a statement, the firm noted that its portfolio includes over 50,000 unique RNAscope ISH probes across more than 400 species for spatial biology research and clinical applications.
In its Unified Patent Court suit, which was filed in the Netherlands Local Division of the Court of First Instance in The Hague, Bio-Techne alleges that Molecular Instruments' HCR 3.0 technology infringes two European patents (1,910,572 and 2,500,439) held by Bio-Techne's Advanced Cell Diagnostics (ACD) brand.
"Bio-Techne has made substantial investments to become the global leader in the rapidly growing spatial biology industry, including the development and application of its RNAscope technology as well as the acquisition of Lunaphore, which added the fully automated, high-throughput, hyperplex COMET platform to the portfolio," Kim Kelderman, Bio-Techne's president and CEO, said. "We will continue to diligently monitor the spatial biology industry, as well as all of the areas where we operate, for violators of our intellectual property and vigorously defend our position against any potential offenders."
The lawsuit seeks damages plus injunctive relief, requiring Molecular Instruments to stop infringing ACD's patents in key European Union markets, Bio-Techne said.
