MGI responded to a complaint filed by Illumina on February 27 in the US District Court for the Northern District of California against MGI’s DNBSEQ™ sequencing instruments and MPS reagents.

MGI believes that this complaint is completely without merit and an obvious attempt by Illumina to maintain a monopolistic market position and prevent choice from being offered to customers.

We intend to vigorously defend our intellectual property, as we have in other jurisdictions, and strive for choice in the market.

In May 2019, Complete Genomics, a U.S. affiliate of MGI, sued Illumina in U.S. District Court for the District of Delaware, alleging infringement of Complete Genomics' two-color sequencing technology patent (U.S. Patent No. 9,222,132), which involves various Illumina genetic sequencers and related reagents. 

In September 2019, Complete Genomics, a U.S. affiliate of MGI, filed a patent infringement counterclaim against Illumina in U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California. The lawsuit alleges infringement of MGI’s proprietary Patterned Array technology (U.S. Patent No. 9,944,984), seeking damages and an injunction which would require Illumina to stop selling the infringing products and provide infringement compensation.

The judge’s ruling on the California case in February explicitly allows our induced infringement claim against Illumina to proceed, which covers most of Illumina’s current products on the market.