Patent Law

The following is excerpted from an April 1, 2009 QIAGEN press release that appeared at GlobeNewswire:

QIAGEN Gaithersburg Inc. (formerly Digene Corporation), a wholly-owned subsidiary of QIAGEN N.V. (Nasdaq:QGEN) (Frankfurt:QIA) today announced the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit (CAFC) denied an appeal by ThirdWave Technologies Inc. ("ThirdWave"), a wholly-owned subsidiary of Hologic, Inc. (Nasdaq:HOLX) and affirmed a lower court decision which was favorable for QIAGEN.

The CAFC denied a ThirdWave cross-appeal of the antitrust decision in favor of QIAGEN and upheld a January 2008 ruling by Judge Barbara B. Crabb of U.S. District Court for the Western District of Wisconsin. Judge Crabb dismissed the antitrust claims against QIAGEN, noting that QIAGEN "is selling a product that many customers prefer over the product the defendant is selling, with the not surprising result that defendant has not captured as many customers as it wishes it had."

In their ruling, the judges noted that "The district court also correctly found the contracts did not have an anti-competitive effect: Instead; as Digene (now QIAGEN Gaithersburg) points out and ThirdWave does not dispute, the vast majority of Digene's (now QIAGEN Gaithersburg) contracts were entered into after ThirdWave was already competing on the market, (...)".

The Federal Circuit also ruled on QIAGEN's patent infringement appeal against ThirdWave, denying the appeal. QIAGEN had alleged that ThirdWave's Invader(r) HPV Oligo Mix product violates one of QIAGEN's exclusive patents. QIAGEN's exclusive IP on HPV 68 is not affected by this decision.

Read the full press release here.