Court Ruling Upholds Corning Patent

The Court's ruling declared fully enforceable a patent exclusively licensed to Corning for optical biosensors that enable label-independent detection of chemical, biochemical and biological substances in a sample. The Court further concluded that Corning is entitled to a permanent injunction against SRU Biosystems of Woburn, MA, which infringed on the patent and induced a customer to infringe the patent through its testing activities.

Corning had licensed the patent, U.S. Patent 4,815,843, from Artificial Sensing Instruments, ASI AG of Zurich, Switzerland, (ASI). Corning, in conjunction with ASI, filed the lawsuit in July 2003 to terminate SRU's infringement. In November of 2005, the Court issued a ruling in Corning's favor that the patent was indeed valid and that SRU had literally infringed and induced a customer to infringe the patent by undertaking testing activities. Today's decision on the enforcability of the patent and Corning's entitlement to injunctive relief effectively ends SRU's last remaining defense pending before the Court. The Court has directed Corning to submit a proposed Order to implement both injunctive relief and final judgment. A permanent injunction requires the infringer to cease all activities involving the manufacture, use, sale and promotion of infringing products.

"The Court's latest decision holding that our patent is enforceable further underscores the strength and validity of Corning's patent portfolio in this exciting new technology area," said Dr. Jeffrey L. Mooney, commercial technology director, Corning Life Sciences. "While this decision certainly represents a meaningful victory, Corning Life Sciences continues to dedicate significant resources in developing new, state-of-the-art capabilities in the field of label-independent detection, and is committed to bringing key products utilizing this technology to the pharmaceutical and biomedical industries to provide them with revolutionary new tools to faciliate their development work. Corning has identified this platform as a key growth opportunity because of the unique opportunities and value that it will provide our customers. We continue to build our product portfolio and intellectual property position in this area, and will remain diligent in protecting our significant long-term investment."

Beta testing evaluations of Corning's Epic(TM) system, a high throughput label-independent detection platform, are currently being conducted at select pharmaceutical, biotechnology and academic institutions. Corning has also opened an on-site testing and evaluation center at its Corning, N.Y., facilities to potential customers that desire a hands-on evaluation of the Epic system prior to purchase. Full commercial launch of Corning's Epic system is expected to be initiated in the fourth quarter of 2006.