Following a year-long legal battle, Illumina is dropping the intellectual property allegations against Guardant. The companies have also entered into a new long-term purchase and supply commitment.
Pictured: Businessmen shaking hands/iStock, AmnajKhetsamtip
Illumina and Guardant Health are dropping the pending trade secrets litigation between them. The two companies announced Tuesday they will bury the hatchet and play nice, including a new agreement for their commercial partnership.
Last year, Illumina filed the suit alleging that former employees Helmy Eltoukhy and AmirAli Talasaz—the co-CEOs of Guardant Health—stole trade secrets to launch Guardant while still on Illumina’s payroll. Eltoukhy allegedly began drafting patent applications on Illumina computers and later took “tens of thousands of forwarded emails and internal documents” with him when he left the company.
Guardant issued a statement at the time calling the lawsuit “frivolous and retaliatory.” The general counsel for Guardant suggested Illumina was retaliating over antitrust concerns Guardant had raised regarding Illumina’s acquisition of Grail. Illumina denied allegations the lawsuit was in retaliation.
However, Guardant wasn’t the only one with concerns over the Grail deal. In June, the FTC ordered Illumina to divest the acquired cancer diagnostic test maker over competition concerns in the U.S. market. Illumina has since filed an appeal against that decision.
This new agreement between Guardant and Illumina dismisses the litigation with all intellectual property allegations and extends the companies’ commercial relationship with a new long-term purchase and supply commitment. The two will collaborate to share samples and advance cancer research.
“Both companies are deeply committed to our collaboration to help patients and conquer cancer,” Chris Freeman, Guardant’s chief commercial officer, said in a statement.
These types of lawsuits are not uncommon in the biopharma industry. Last month, Pfizer also came to an agreement with a biotech company founded by its former employees.
In 2022, the pharma giant filed a complaint against Regor alleging various instances of trade secret misappropriation, contract breaches, unfair and deceptive trade practices, among others. Two months prior to the lawsuit, Regor secured $50 million in a deal with Eli Lilly for metabolic indications, worth up to a potential $1.5 billion in milestone payments.
Now, both Regor and Pfizer are dropping their claims against each other. However, specific details of the settlement were not publicly released.
Kate Goodwin is a freelance life science writer based in Des Moines, Iowa. She can be reached at kate.goodwin@biospace.com and on LinkedIn.
