Will Oxford Nanopore Sue Roche?
Probably…
Oxford Nanopore (ONT) have been taking aggressive legal action against the BGI based in part on their user agreements, without any specific claims of IP infringement.
It seems likely that someone in a huge organization like Roche will have used a ONT sequencer. Hopefully Roche’s legal team will have reviewed and refused to sign ONT user agreements.
But there are at least a couple of other ways ONT might go Roche…
Duplex
Roche use a hairpin based duplex approach to identify errors.
Oxford also originally used a hairpin duplex approach. This resulted in a lawsuit from PacBio. Oxford agreed not to sell products using the hairpin approach until 2023. That wasn’t the end of it however. The PacBio IP ended up being revoked in the EU, and the ITC ruled that ONT didn’t infringe anyway.
BUT!
ONT have obviously been thinking about this for a while. They also have filings going back to 2010, with this and subsequent filings expiring in 2030.
Would these still patents still hold up given the prior art from PacBio? I’d guess not… but stranger things have happened!