Court permits NanoString counterclaim in 10x Genomics, Harvard litigation

NanoString (NSTG) commented on yesterday’s order of the United States District Court for the District of Delaware in NanoString’s patent litigation with 10x Genomics (TXG) and President and Fellows of Harvard College. In its order, the court granted NanoString’s motion to add new counterclaims for antitrust and unfair competition violations as well as the affirmative defense of “unclean hands” by 10x and Harvard. The ruling relates to NanoString’s claim that Harvard made a non-exclusive licensing commitment in order to secure grant funding from the National Institutes of Health, or NIH, for work that led to the patents at issue in the litigation. In granting NanoString’s motion to add the antitrust counterclaims, the court cited as plausible NanoString’s allegations that “’10x and Harvard are pursuing an ill-gotten monopoly by enforcing patents that are subject to a requirement that they be licensed non-exclusively,'” and stated, “NanoString has also plausibly alleged that this scheme, if successful, will provide 10x and Harvard with monopoly power to ‘force customers in the single-cell spatial transcriptomics market to pay artificially inflated prices.'” The ruling follows an order by the court in June granting NanoString’s motion for expedited production of materials relating to the NIH grant issue.