Defendant
1 case as defendant.
Company overview. Invitrogen Corporation was a publicly traded life-sciences company (NASDAQ: IVGN), founded in 1987 in Carlsbad, California. It went public in 1999; by 2006 it reported roughly 4,700 employees and revenues above $1.15 billion (BioSpace). Invitrogen ceased to exist as an independent entity in November 2008, when it merged with Applied Biosystems to form Life Technologies Corporation; Thermo Fisher Scientific acquired Life Technologies in February 2014 for about $13.6 billion. Today, "Invitrogen" survives as a product brand within Thermo Fisher.
Products and operations. Invitrogen was a research-tools operating company — a "repackager" and seller of reagents, kits, and consumables for molecular biology, used by academic, government, pharmaceutical, and biotech laboratories. Its product lines spanned gene cloning (including its patented TOPO cloning system), gene expression and analysis, cell culture (GIBCO), fluorescent labeling (Molecular Probes), and magnetic-bead separation (Dynal Biotech), among dozens of acquired brands.
Patent-litigation posture. Invitrogen was an operating company, not a patent assertion entity. The tracked database shows a single appearance — as defendant (0 plaintiff cases): Incyte Genomics, Inc. v. Invitrogen Corporation, filed November 21, 2001, in the Southern District of California (San Diego, where Invitrogen was headquartered — not a plaintiff-friendly venue like the Eastern District of Texas). This was genuinely a two-way dispute: the case was Incyte's counter-suit after Invitrogen sued Incyte in Delaware the prior month over Invitrogen's reverse-transcriptase patents.
Notable context. Incyte's San Diego complaint asserted 16 patents covering gene sequences, RNA amplification/gene expression, and microarray fabrication. The parallel Delaware action concerned patents for RNase H-minus reverse transcriptase (embodied in Invitrogen's SuperScript products), originally assigned to Life Technologies, Inc., which Invitrogen acquired in 2000; proceedings were later stayed after a related appeal invalidated those patents. Invitrogen's litigation history is thus inseparable from its acquisition-driven growth, with many disputes inherited from Maryland-based Life Technologies.
Incyte Genomics asserted sixteen patents, including U.S. Patent Nos. 5,807,522 and 6,110,426, which related to methods of fabricating microarrays of biological samples. Incyte sought injunctive relief, damages, treble damages for alleged willful infringement, fees, costs, and interest. The ultimate disposition of the case was not verified in the retrieved sources.