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ARTICLE · 11 MAY 2026

D. Mass. Patent Litigation Update: March 2026

Finnegan, Henderson, Farabow, Garrett & Dunner LLP
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Recent orders from the United States District Court for the District of Massachusetts address critical questions of patent standing, priority dates, and the on-sale bar in two complex intellectual property disputes. How do confidentiality arrangements and exclusive licensing agreements affect infringement claims, and when do a company's own prior product sales invalidate later patent applications?

United StatesIntellectual Property
Matthew C. Berntsen
Matthew C. Berntsen
Janvi U. Shah
Janvi U. Shah
Xu Wang
Xu Wang
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This is part of a series of articles discussing recent orders of interest issued in patent cases by the United States District Court for the District of Massachusetts.

In two related opinions, Judge Guzman denied Defendants Waters Corporation and AB Sciex LLC’s motions to dismiss for failure to state a claim related to contractual and patent infringement causes of action, while dismissing the unjust-enrichment claim against Sciex.

The asserted patents are directed to mass-spectrometry ionization technology used to identify and quantify compounds within a sample. M&M markets and sells a product with this technology, and MSTM serves as its distributor. A subset of the asserted patents are assigned to non-party universities and licensed to MSTM exclusively.

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