Axis-Shield loses US court case over patent claim

AXIS-Shield has lost a long- running legal dispute in which it claimed that one of its rivals was infringing its patents on a test for cardiac risk.

The Dundee-based company yesterday confirmed that a Federal court in Northern California had upheld an earlier ruling that a product sold by Diazyme, a division of General Atomics, was not unlicensed competition as Axis-Shield had alleged.

The rival product will be allowed to remain on sale.

Axis-Shield said yesterday that it was disappointed in the decision but believed its product was technically superior to that of its rival,. It promised to “continue to stress this advantage with the US customer base”.

With the rival product now legitimised by the decision, a spokesman for Axis-Shield conceded the company may lose some market share, adding that it would be made up “in savings from the end of litigation”.

The spokesman said the cost of the legal action was likely to have been “in the hundreds of thousands, as opposed to the millions” of pounds.

Shares in Axis-Shield closed up 4.5p at 314.5p yesterday.