His tiny prenatal testing company has big plans after exacting legal revenge on lab giants

Ravin­der Dhal­lan’s name is on key patents in non­in­va­sive pre­na­tal test­ing, a field that has re­shaped screen­ing for ex­pec­tant moth­ers. But he was a mi­nor fig­ure in the $3.8 bil­lion mar­ket.

Then, in 2020, his tiny com­pa­ny Rav­gen filed lit­i­ga­tion that ac­cused ri­vals of copy­ing its tech­nol­o­gy.

Over the last year, Rav­gen has won set­tle­ments or law­suits against some of the biggest names in test­ing. It was award­ed $375.5 mil­lion from Lab­o­ra­to­ry Cor­po­ra­tion of Amer­i­ca, bet­ter known as Lab­corp, af­ter a ju­ry ver­dict and a judge’s or­der for puni­tive dam­ages. Oth­er be­he­moths — Quest Di­ag­nos­tics, PerkinElmer and Il­lu­mi­na — have set­tled for undis­closed sums. Lit­i­ga­tion against Nat­era, Roche, Myr­i­ad and Bio­ra is on­go­ing, though the de­fen­dants have ar­gued that their meth­ods were de­rived in­de­pen­dent­ly or with part­ners.

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