Molecular Diagnostics Laboratories

Company overview. "Molecular Diagnostics Laboratories" ("MDL") appears in U.S. court records only as the named plaintiff in Molecular Diagnostics Laboratories v. Hoffmann-La Roche Inc., et al., D.D.C. Civil Action No. 04-01649 (HHK). I could not verify its headquarters, founding year, ownership status, employee count, or revenue from any public source; no company website, SEC filing, or directory entry for this name was located. Court filings describe it only as a direct purchaser of Taq DNA polymerase and PCR-related products. A separate company, Molecular Diagnostics, Inc. (West Haven, CT; later Chicago), holds diagnostics patents, but no connection between the two was verified.

Products / operations. MDL is characterized in litigation as a consumer of Taq, the thermostable enzyme used in polymerase chain reaction (PCR) amplification — consistent with a laboratory end-user of molecular-biology reagents rather than a patent holder or manufacturer. Specific product lines, services, and size are unverified.

Litigation posture. One tracked case, as plaintiff; zero as defendant. MDL is not an NPE and did not assert patents. It filed a Walker Process / Sherman Act §2 antitrust claim as a direct purchaser, alleging Roche and Applera (successor to Perkin-Elmer) monopolized the Taq market through U.S. Patent 4,889,818, which a California district court found unenforceable for inequitable conduct in the Roche v. Promega litigation. Venue was the District of Columbia — home of its counsel, Cohen, Milstein, Hausfeld & Toll (now Hausfeld LLP) — not a plaintiff-friendly patent venue such as the Eastern District of Texas.

Notable case. In a November 2005 opinion (402 F. Supp. 2d 276), Judge Henry H. Kennedy Jr. denied the defendants' motions to dismiss, holding direct purchasers have standing to bring Walker Process claims and allowing claims accruing from September 23, 2000 onward. The tracked list shows a 2003-09-23 filing date, while the opinion and plaintiff's counsel state the complaint was filed September 23, 2004. The case settled in 2008 for $33 million, approved December 19, 2008 (about $11 million in fees, $3.25 million in expenses, plus a $40,000 incentive award to MDL), with distribution to more than 1,000 class members in 2009.