Federal Circuit Reverses $4.7M Verdict in Labcorp v. QIAGEN: Claim Scope and Doctrine of Equivalents in the Crosshairs

The Federal Circuit recently reversed a $4.7M verdict in a patent lawsuit involving two patents concerning next-generation sequencing methods—U.S. Patent Nos. 10,017,810 and 10,450,597. Both patents concern DNA preparation using different types of primers: “target-specific primers” that bind to regions of interest in the genome and other primers or adaptors that enable sequencing.

The dispute boiled down to whether QIAGEN’s primers—specifically, its “second indexing primer” (SIP) and “forward primer” (FP)—could qualify as the claimed “second target-specific primer” and “target-specific primer.” Labcorp persuaded the jury they did. But on appeal, the Federal Circuit held that there was no legally sufficient evidence of infringement—either literal or under the doctrine of equivalents (DOE