Illumina's patent lawsuit against BGI took another turn this week, with Illumina announcing that a federal court had issued a preliminary injunction prohibiting BGI from launching its sequencing devices and related reagents in the U.S.
The order was issued by the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California against several BGI companies, including MGI Tech, Complete Genomics, BGI Americas, and MGI Americas. The order prohibits the BGI firms from supplying, using, or selling the sequencing technology in both standard and CoolMPS chemistries.
Illumina filed lawsuits against BGI in June 2019 and February 2020, charging the company with infringing on its proprietary sequencing-by-synthesis chemistry. The U.S. litigation is scheduled to go to trial in May 2021; other lawsuits are pending globally.
