Poll: Supreme Court Favors Roche in HIV Patent Dispute: Do You Agree?

The Supreme Court sided with Roche Molecular Systems over Stanford University in a patent dispute for an HIV testing kit that uses polymerase chain reaction (PCR) technology. Dr Mark Holodniy, a fellow at Stanford University and inventor of the PCR technology, was assigned by the university to conduct research at Cetus. While there, he signed a contract assigning any inventions arising from his time there to Cetus; he signed a similar agreement with Stanford. Roche acquired Cetus’s rights to the test and developed and commercialized a widely used kit; Stanford sued for patent infringement.

Stanford argued that Dr Holodniy could not assign rights to Cetus due to the Bayh-Dole Act, which deals with intellectual property arising from federally funded research.

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