Invitrogen wins reverse transcriptase patent lawsuit against Clontech

By Angela McDaniels

Seattle, Dec. 1 - Invitrogen Corp. said the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit found that Clontech Laboratories Inc.'s Powerscript reverse transcriptase products infringe upon Invitrogen's U.S. Patent No. 6,063,608.

In the decision, the Court of Appeals remanded the case to the district court for further proceedings.

"Reverse Transcription is an important first step in a wide variety of molecular biology research applications, and our improved reverse transcriptase products are a widely used, valuable tool in this area of research," said John Cottingham, senior vice president and general counsel for Invitrogen, in a company news release.

"As this case proceeds to the district court, we plan to vigorously pursue all available remedies for Clontech's infringement of our intellectual property"

The patents included in the lawsuit cover reverse transcriptases that increase the length, yield and quality of cDNA produced from mRNA in a reverse transcription reaction, the company said.

The patents are directed, in part, to mutations that disable the RNase H activity of native reverse transcriptase. Invitrogen offers more than 100 different products based on this technology, and purchase of any of these products provides an Invitrogen customer a limited license under its patents to use them for research purposes.

Such Invitrogen products include SuperScript RT and ThermoScript RT, kits containing these reverse transcriptases and cDNA libraries made with these reverse transcriptases.

Clontech's PowerScript products and their customers' use of them are not licensed under these patents, the company said.

Invitrogen sued Clontech on Dec. 31, 1996 in the U.S. District Court for the District of Maryland.

Invitrogen is based in Carlsbad, Calif. and provides life science technologies for disease research, drug discovery and commercial bioproduction. Invitrogen's own research and development efforts are focused on functional genomics, proteomics, bioinformatics and cell biology.

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