are: Darcey Nett, president; Gaby Frazer, chief operating officer; and Laura Brown, director of clinical sales and partnerships.
—The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit affirmed a Wisconsin judge’s decision to overturn a verdict awarding $52 million in damages to Fitchburg-based Promega, according to Life Sciences Intellectual Property Review, a trade publication. Promega, which manufactures reagents and other life sciences research tools, had earlier brought suit against Life Technologies, a business unit of Waltham, MA-based Thermo Fisher Scientific (NYSE: [[ticker:TMO]]). Promega claimed in the lawsuit that Life Technologies infringed on a U.S. patent when the company supplied a plant in London with an enzyme meant to be combined with other components to make DNA analysis kits. A jury had previously awarded $52 million in damages to Promega in 2012, but a judge later set that verdict aside. Then, in February, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled against Promega in the case, which led the company to appeal to the Federal Circuit.
—Understory, a Madison-based weather technology startup, unveiled a new collaboration with Palo Alto, CA-based Pacific Specialty Insurance Company aimed at lowering the amount of money insurers pay policyholders for weather-related property damage. The two businesses have been working together in recent months to evaluate how Understory’s hardware and software tools can be used—both before and after inclement weather events—to help reduce costs for insurers.
—UW-Madison’s news service reported that Lactic Solutions, a company spun out of research conducted at the school, was acquired last month by Lallemand Biofuels & Distilled Spirits, a business unit of Ontario, Canada-based Lallemand, for an undisclosed sum.
Lactic Solutions had been seeking to commercialize a patented method for getting lactic acid bacteria to produce ethanol, rather than lactic acid, which can be harmful. Just as lactic acid bacteria can contaminate beer and wine by producing lactic acid instead of alcohol, it can also create snags in the ethanol production process, the university said. James Steele, a food science professor at UW-Madison, founded Lactic Solutions in 2015.
