Helicos BioSciences Corporation Settles its Patent Litigation Against Pacific Biosciences

Helicos BioSciences Corporation HLCS announced today that it has settled its patent infringement litigation against Pacific Biosciences, Inc. The settlement gives Pacific Biosciences freedom-to-operate from Helicos's patents within a limited field of use covering Pacific Biosciences' PACB current products only. In addition to paying an undisclosed financial settlement, Pacific Biosciences agreed to refrain from challenging the validity, enforceability, or patentability of any of Helicos's patents, which includes halting its efforts in the inter partes reexamination of the patents in suit with the USPTO. "After carefully evaluating sales trends in the next generation sequencing marketplace over the last several quarters, including the trend in Pacific Biosciences's sales, and balancing potential future recovery versus litigation cost, we have concluded that the best course of action for Helicos is to settle with Pacific Biosciences” stated Dr. Ivan Trifunovich, President and CEO of Helicos. “The settlement and the associated non-exclusive and non-sublicensable license are narrowly focused on Pacific Biosciences's own technology. Our aim is to focus on the market leader Illumina as well as on Life Technologies, and we plan on continuing to pursue vigorously the patent infringement cases against them.”