Blue Heron Biotechnology has no more than a few dozen employees, but it is one of the world leaders in the specialized business of synthesizing genes. The privately held Bothell company is usually pretty quiet. It’s in the news now, however, for a wholly unwanted reason: it’s being sued.
Here’s the meat of the press release from the plaintiff, a Massachusetts biotech called Codon Devices:
“Codon Devices Inc. announced today that the Company has filed a lawsuit against Blue Heron Biotechnology of Bothell, WA. The Complaint, filed in the United States District Court for the District of Delaware, asserts that Blue Heron Biotechnology, through use of its Genemaker(r) gene synthesis platform, is infringing five U.S. patents.
“The asserted patents, which cover pioneering DNA error correction technologies, include United States Patent Nos. 5,459,039; 5,556,750; 5,679,522; 5,702,894; and 5,750,335, all of which are exclusively licensed to Codon Devices. The Complaint seeks unspecified monetary damages and a court injunction against future infringement by Blue Heron Biotechnology.”
Codon’s patent attorney had no additional comment when I called her this morning. Blue Heron’s CEO, John Fess, said the company will release a statement later today. Here’s a profile I wrote on Blue Heron in 2004, http://www.heraldnet.com/stories/04/09/27/bus_dna001.cfm. Here’s the company’s Web site, http://www.blueheronbio.com, and here’s Codon’s Web site, http://www.codondevices.com/.
Codon’s a relative newcomer as a company, having been launched in 2005, while Blue Heron’s been around since about 1999.
UPDATE: So, according to the Boston Globe, it turns out that Codon hasn’t been around long, but it’s patents may have been. The Globe reported today that the company’s patents were licensed from MIT and Duke and date back to 1995 and 1998, before Blue Heron got its start. Here’s the link to that (it’s the sixth item in this column): http://www.boston.com/business/globe/articles/2007/03/15/union_members_vote_to_authorize_strike_at_hotels/.
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