A lawsuit in the Biotech industry against Illumina, Thermo Fisher, Others Alleges Fraud, Theft of Trade Secrets

A lawsuit was filed making far-reaching claims of trade secret theft and fraud against Illumina (manufacturer of Next Generation Sequencing), Affymetrix (DNA microarray manufacturer), Thermo Fisher Scientific (parent company of Affymetrix), and individuals in the genomics industry. The lawsuit accuses Stephen Fodor (at the time was chief technology officer at Affymetrix) that while peer reviewing one of Barany team's grant proposal prevented the researchers from getting the grant and then tried to re-patent the idea at Affymetrix. In addition, it alleges, that Affymetrix went on to submit and obtain a $30 million grant. The lawsuit accuses the founders of Illumina of submitting multiple patent applications that appropriated the plaintiffs' technology. It alleges that Illumina's SNP genotyping arrays, as well as its AmpliSeq for Illumina reagents, infringe on the zip code sequence technology as well as a number of patents originally assigned to Barany. In total, the lawsuit includes 12 counts, alleging the defendants violated the Defend Trade Secrets Act, misappropriated trade secrets, committed racketeering, breached fiduciary duties, submitted false and misleading patent applications, and deprived the plaintiffs of economic advantages, and committed civil conspiracy. @ https://www.genomeweb.com/sequencing/lawsuit-against-illumina-thermo-fisher-others-alleges-fraud-theft-trade-secrets?utm_source=addthis_shares#.W2sekShKiM_
Lawsuit Against Illumina, Thermo Fisher, Others Alleges Fraud, Theft of Trade Secrets

The lawsuit makes broad accusations that companies stole trade secrets related to universal array technology.

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