Sunday, November 3, 2013

Footnote on Ariosa


According to the complaint in one of the cases now styled Ariosa v Sequenom, the original plaintiff was a company called Aria.  According to the March 28, 2012 edition of a web based journal, Clinical Sequencing News:


"Aria Changes Name to Ariosa Diagnostics; Completes Clinical Validation of Prenatal Trisomy Test."


Friday, November 1, 2013

Sequenom agaonst Ariosa


Sequenom and Ariosa are the two parties named in the NYT article in the previous post.  As usual, it is not that simple.  There are several parties on both sides and a lot of cross suing going on.  But my research has revealed one of the patents (there may be more) involved in the case.  USPN 6,258,540 is directed to:

"Non-invasive prenatal diagnosis."

The Abstract of the Patent:
"The invention relates to a detection method performed on a maternal serum or plasma sample from a pregnant female, which method comprises detecting the presence of a nucleic acid of foetal origin in the sample. The invention enables non-invasive prenatal diagnosis including for example sex determination, blood typing and other genotyping, and detection of pre-eclampsia in the mother."
Talk about ethics!  This one's a beaut.

Here's a link to the patent:

http://patft.uspto.gov/netacgi/nph-Parser?Sect1=PTO1&Sect2=HITOFF&d=PALL&p=1&u=%2Fnetahtml%2FPTO%2Fsrchnum.htm&r=1&f=G&l=50&s1=6258540.PN.&OS=PN/6258540&RS=PN/6258540

Judge Invalidates Patent for a Down Syndrome Test

http://www.nytimes.com/2013/11/01/business/judge-invalidates-patent-for-a-down-syndrome-test.html?emc=edit_tnt_20131031&tntemail0=y&_r=0