Affymetrix, Inc., announced an expanded licensing programme that makes some of its most recently issued patents, as well as early patents in microarrays. The patents include intellectual property in areas such as DNA and protein arrays, scanner/detector technology, and microfluidics, as well as a broadened portfolio of patents related to the use of beads to measure nucleic acids or peptide binding for genomic analysis.

"We are delighted to make certain of our issued patents in all of these technologies available for licensing," said Alan Sherr, director of Licensing for Affymetrix. "The first in this series of licensing initiatives includes a wide range of claims directed specifically to beads, methods of their use and detectors for reading their signals. Our vision is to make our intellectual property estate accessible on reasonable terms to stimulate the broad commercialization of genome analysis technologies so that science and society can reap the benefits."

The Affymetrix licensing portfolio includes patents in the general areas: Arrays of biological polymers on various substrates at various densities; Use of bar codes with biological polymer arrays or array packages; Scanning technology and associated instrumentation and software; Microfluidics related to experimentation using microarrays; Assays and reagents; and, Bead-related products and methods including: Coded beads to which polymer probes are attached; Methods for identifying target molecules by reading a binding reagent coding system attached to beads; Methods for distinguishing between biological materials using nucleic acid probes attached to beads; and, Laser scanners or other devices for detection of fluorescently labeled nucleic acid targets bound to nucleic acids attached to beads.

Other related Affymetrix patents may be of interest, and are available for licensing, to organizations commercializing and using bead technology, designing microarrays, manufacturing or using microarrays, detecting and analyzing signals from microarrays, employing bioinformatics and software to analyze microarrays, and other array-related areas.