Since the announcement that we ended our litigation over the gene patents for progressive retinal atrophy (prcd), collie eye anomaly, congenital stationary night blindness in Briards, and retinal dysplasia/oculoskeletal dysplasia in Labradors, there has been a huge outpouring of encouragement and congratulations from our customers. At Paw Print Genetics, we are all very touched by this support.
I have also received a number of emails from customers worried that we may raise our prices because of this new sublicense. I have even seen this question debated on Facebook and understand the concern. As you can imagine, the lawsuits from the past couple of years were expensive. We paid hundreds of thousands of dollars in legal fees to support our cases. Last year, we won our case in Federal court and the patent for exercise-induced collapse (EIC) was invalidated. This allowed our customers to register their EIC results with the Orthopedic Foundation for Animals (OFA), but also cleared the way for other laboratories to offer this test without fear of litigation, even though they did not participate in the lawsuits or help fund our cause. As we are recovering from these huge litigation costs, we are doing all ...