Leerink sees Court ruling as small win for Guardant, no change to patent risk

Leerink says the Court decision is an incremental positive in Guardant Health’s (GH) litigation against the University of Washington and TwinStrand. However, this decision does not strike down patent 10,760,127. Instead, it remands the case to PTAB so the appeal board can potentially consider patent validity under a different framework. And more importantly, it does not affect patent 10,287,631, which Guardant also infringed upon, Leerink adds. The ‘631 patent is going through its own ex parte reexamination. Therefore, the firm sees no immediate change but Guardant could potentially end up paying less damages vs the previously contemplated 6% royalty rate. Leerink has an Outperform rating on the shares.