PerSeptive Biosystems, Inc. — commonly styled PerSeptive (and sometimes spelled "Perseptive") — was a life-science tools company founded in 1989 (some accounts say 1990; originally incorporated as Synosys) by Purdue chemist Fred Regnier and MIT-trained entrepreneur Noubar Afeyan. It was headquartered at 500 Old Connecticut Path, Framingham, Massachusetts, and went public in May 1992 (PitchBook; Smithsonian Libraries trade catalogs). Perkin-Elmer Corporation acquired it for $360 million — announced August 1997, completed 1998 — and merged it with Applied Biosystems, Tropix and PE Informatics into the PE Biosystems division, later renamed PE Corporation (1999) and Applera (2000). Through subsequent mergers the business passed to Applied Biosystems, Life Technologies (2008) and ultimately Thermo Fisher Scientific (2014), so PerSeptive no longer exists as an independent company.
Products / operations. PerSeptive developed, manufactured and sold instruments and consumables for the purification, analysis and synthesis of biomolecules. Product lines included perfusion chromatography media and columns (POROS particles), the BioCAD chromatography workstation, Voyager MALDI-TOF Biospectrometry workstations (Voyager-DE, -DE PRO, -DE STR), solid-phase DNA and peptide synthesis reagents and instrumentation, and reagents for immunoassay and biological mass spectrometry (company manuals; Tracxn; C&EN). The U.S. Department of Justice reported PerSeptive product sales of over $96 million in fiscal 1997, and C&EN reported sales exceeding $100 million by 1998.
Litigation posture. The tracked data show PerSeptive in a single case, as a defendant (0 plaintiff cases) — consistent with an operating company defending litigation, not a non-practicing entity.
Notable case. In Affymetrix, Inc. v. PE Corporation (N.Y.) et al., Affymetrix sought declaratory judgment that the Caruthers DNA-synthesis patents asserted by PE Corporation (N.Y.), Applera and Competitive Technologies were not infringed, invalid and unenforceable. PerSeptive was named on an Affymetrix breach-of-contract count alleging breach of warranty and failure to defend and indemnify over amidite products it had supplied. Affymetrix first filed in Delaware in July 2000; that action was dismissed in September 2000 for lack of subject-matter jurisdiction, and the case proceeded in California from January 2001 (CourtListener opinions 2526031, 2447770; BioCentury).