US High Court To Consider Stanford Patent Suit Against Roche

The U.S. Supreme Court agreed Monday to hear a dispute between Stanford University and a Roche Holding AG (RHHBY, ROG.VX) subsidiary over three patents for measuring HIV in blood samples.

The case could affect the ability of universities to protect their patent rights to inventions created through federally funded research.

Stanford said its researchers developed the HIV measuring method in the 1990s with funding from the National Institutes of Health. One of the researchers, however, had entered into an agreement with Cetus Corp., a local biotech company, under which he pledged to assign his patent rights to Cetus in exchange for access to the company's information and facilities. Cetus eventually transferred those rights to Roche.

Stanford later sued Roche, arguing the company's HIV-detection kits infringed the university's patents. Roche countered that it was a co-owner of the patents, but Stanford said its researcher never had the authority to assign his patent rights to Roche.

A federal appeals court ruled for Roche, saying the researcher's agreement with Cetus trumped the contract he had signed with Stanford.

The Supreme Court will review that ruling.

Stanford based its patent-rights claims on a 1980 federal law that gives schools the ability to retain patent rights on inventions created with federal funding. Stanford argued that universities' ownership of countless inventions could be threatened if the school loses the case. The Obama administration and several leading universities filed briefs supporting Stanford's high-court appeal.

Roche said Stanford could never have obtained the patents without the information the school obtained from Cetus. It also argued the case would not have the dire consequences Stanford and its supporters predicted.

Oral arguments are likely to take place early next year, with a decision expected by the end of June.

The case is Board of Trustees of the Leland Stanford Junior University v. Roche Molecular Systems, 09-1159.

In other news Monday, the court declined to review a ruling that overturned a $21 million judgment against Nintendo Co. (7974.OK, NTDOY) in a patent-infringement case involving video-game controllers. Anascape Ltd. had argued that Nintendo's GameCube and Wii Classic controllers infringed one of its patents.

-By Brent Kendall, Dow Jones Newswires; 202-862-9222; brent.kendall@dowjones.com

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