Can You Resell An Illumina Sequencer?

I was poking through Illumina lawsuits (as you do) and came across this lawsuit where International Equipment Trading took them to court accusing Illumina of engaging in “unlawful and anticompetitive conduct”.

International Equipment Trading (IET) resells lab equipment. What seems to have happened is that when IET tried to sell a sequencer Illumina would go to the customer as say they need to pay a “site licensing fee”. In the case of the HiSeq 4000 they say this was $90000. IET alleged this was a scare tactic used by Illumina, perhaps to drive new instrument sales:

“Illumina has also refused to service equipment purchased by a customer from IET or sell parts to that customer without what it deems to be a “proper” software license, refusing to recognize customers as “authorized users.” Consumers in need of replacement parts have no choice but to give in to Illumina’s threats”

The whole issue is further complicated by 3rd party leasing agreements. Because in those cases the software is licensed and may be transferred by a third party. Even so in some cases it appears that Illumina may have refused to “service” (I think in this case provide reagents) without a service contract costing $70000.

Based on this and other examples, IET accused Illumina of violating the Sherman Act, and consumer protection laws.

Unfortunately (for us) IET and Illumina settled, so we don’t know how exactly this would have played out. But Illumina does seem to have changed stance substantially in recent years. Firstly, they seem more of less happy to provide users with reagents for secondhand instruments without service contracts. Those users seem to lose their reagent warranty, but that’s all.

Secondly, I see a lot more instruments on eBay which have had their hard drives wiped/removed. I suspect that might be because Illumina have started doing/recommending that as part of their decommissioning process. In most cases, there’s no way to reinstall the software without contacting Illumina (and I suspect signing up for a service contract).

Full initial court filing is below for paid subscribers, it costs me money to buy these, so support is much appreciated.