Here's a report on the IGEN case:
mddailyrecord.com
Igen settles, begins fight
By KAREN BUCKELEW
Daily Record Business Writer
Printer Friendly Format
Roche Diagnostics at last has offered a settlement to Gaithersburg-based Igen International Inc., though it’s not directly related to the two companies’ long-running Maryland court battle over royalties, and amounts to little more than “a cookie,” according to one expert.
The $5.7 million settlement Roche offered last week — just as the Maryland trial finally kicked off in U.S. District Court in Greenbelt after four years of waiting — is in a Delaware patent infringement suit brought against Igen by Serono, a company with which both Igen and Roche did business.
Roche originally was named as a defendant in the suit along with Igen, with Serono suing both of them for patent infringement.
Roche then settled with Serono, bought the Serono patent through a Roche affiliate, and became a plaintiff in the suit against Igen, “basically to put Igen out of business,” said Mark Hardcastle, an Igen investor and Baltimore attorney who is closely tracking the case but is not working as a lawyer on it.
“Roche was attempting to use the Serono patent suit as a hammer to Igen’s head, [saying], ‘If you don’t drop the Maryland case, we’re going to club you with this Serono suit,’” Hardcastle said.
“The settlement is a complete capitulation,” he said, explaining: Roche is saying the suit “never should have happened in the first place.”
Financially, the $5.7 million does no more than reimburse Igen for its legal fees. However, the deal does effectively dismiss all the claims in the suit and it gives Igen rights to the patent under dispute.
Igen said in a statement last week that the settlement “is acceptable” with certain conditions.
The Daily Record was unable to reach anyone at Roche’s Basel, Switzerland, offices for comment on Friday.
The settlement was announced by Igen attorney Howard Shapiro in his opening statement last week, as Igen’s four-year legal wrangle with Roche reached a Maryland courtroom.
The Maryland lawsuit is over a licensing agreement Roche held for Igen’s Origen diagnostic technology. Igen claims include that Roche did not properly exploit the technology as required by the agreement, and that it did not pay Igen proper royalties.
Igen already has won three summary judgement motions in the case, the damages for which will be set at trial. The jury will decide on the case’s 11 remaining counts.
The size of last week’s Delaware settlement should not be considered a harbinger of things to come in the Maryland trial, said Luke Smith, an equities analyst with Towson’s Chapin, Davis.
In Maryland courts, punitive damages must be awarded in proportion to the wealth of the perpetrator, Smith pointed out.
Roche “thinks when they’re caught with their hand in the cookie jar, all they have to do is give the cookie back,” Smith said. In the Delaware settlement, “they’re just giving back the cookie.”
But Shapiro seems to want much more from Roche for the local royalty suit, saying in his opening argument that he would request punitive damages so large that Roche will never perpetrate a similar wrong on anyone again.
Shapiro said compensatory damages alone in the case could exceed $750 million.
For Igen, punitive damages proportionate to the estimated $50 billion net worth of all Roche’s affiliated companies obviously could be huge.
Igen’s stock closed at $29.31, up 14 cents, or 0.5 percent, on Friday.
Peter |
