Life Technologies Corporation was a biotech company founded in November 2008 through a US $6.7 billion merger of

Invitrogen Invitrogen is one of several brands under the Thermo Fisher Scientific corporation. The product line includes various subbrands of biotechnology products, such as machines and consumables for polymerase chain reaction, reverse transcription, ...

Corporation and

Applied Biosystems Applied Biosystems is one of various brands under the Life Technologies brand of Thermo Fisher Scientific corporation. The brand is focused on integrated systems for genetic analysis, which include computerized machines and the consumables used ...

Inc. The joint sales of the combined companies were about $3.5 billion; they had about 9,500 employees and owned more than 3,600 licenses and patents.

Company name

The name "Life Technologies" was an old name from the history of Invitrogen. GIBCO (Grand Island Biological Company) had been founded around 1960 in New York; in 1983 GIBCO merged with a reagent company called Bethesda Research Laboratories (BRL) and the merged company was named Life Technologies. In 2000, Invitrogen acquired Life Technologies and discontinued that name. When Invitrogen and Applied Biosystems merged, the companies revived the name. The use of the "Life Technologies" brand name is disputed. Life Technologies (India) Private Limited, a company founded in 2002, operating in this corporate name claims ownership of the brand name. The "Life Technologies" brand language and industrial design for the award-winning Ion Proton Sequencer was developed by RKS Design.

Acquisition

Between its formation in 2008 and its acquisition by Thermo Fisher Scientific in 2014, Life Technologies Corporation was an independent multinational corporation based in

Carlsbad, California Carlsbad is a beach city in the North County area of San Diego County, California, United States. The city is north of downtown San Diego and south of downtown Los Angeles. As of the 2020 United States census, 2020 census, the population of ...

, United States. In 2013, they launched a project called Claritas Genomics in partnership with

Boston Children's Hospital Boston Children's Hospital (formerly known as Children's Hospital Boston until 2013) is the main pediatric training and research hospital of Harvard Medical School, Harvard University. It is a nationally ranked, freestanding acute care children ...

. With Children's as a major shareholder
Claritas Genomics
merged the knowledge, resources, and employees of the Genetic Diagnostic Lab at the Boston hospital, a CLIA-certified facility that provided more than 100 genetic tests, including numerous specific diagnostics created at Boston Children's. It also made use of the Ion Proton Sequencer from Life Technologies, a precise benchtop device that might be scaled for widespread use in new assays. Later, in 2013, Thermo Fisher agreed to buy Life Technologies for $13.6 billion.

Legal disputes

A court case involving Life Technologies (as the former Applera Corp) ended in January 2014, as the Connecticut District Court penalized Life Technologies Corp over $60 million for patent infringements by its parent companies prior to the merger. The jury awarded $48 million in royalty damages to the plaintiffs Enzo Biochem, Inc, Enzo Life Sciences, and Yale University.

References

{{Authority control Thermo Fisher Scientific Research support companies Manufacturing companies based in California Companies based in Carlsbad, California 2014 mergers and acquisitions