Life Technologies (Thermo Fisher Scientific)


Life Technologies Corporation was a biotech company founded in November 2008 through a US$6.7 billion merger of Invitrogen Corporation and Applied Biosystems Inc. The joint sales of the combined companies were about $3.5 billion; they had about 9,500 employees, and owned more than 3,600 licenses and patents.
Thermo Fisher Scientific Corporation acquired the company in 2014 and used the Life Technologies brand name for a family of biotechnology products and services from Feb 2014 to July 2015. Thermo Fisher retired the Life Technologies brand name and logos in late July 2015, following a world-wide release letter to all customers in five languages.

Company name

The name "Life Technologies" was an old name from the history of Invitrogen. GIBCO had been founded around 1960 in New York; in 1983 GIBCO merged with a reagent company called Bethesda Research Laboratories and the merged company was named Life Technologies. In 2000, Invitrogen acquired Life Technologies and discontinued that name. When Invitrogen and Applied Biosystems merged, the companies revived the name.
The use of the "Life Technologies" brand name is disputed. Life Technologies Private Limited, a company founded in 2002, operating in this corporate name claims ownership of the brand name.
In January 2014, a legal dispute on the use of the mark "Life Technologies" in India concluded as the Delhi High Court denied Life Technologies' request to prevent the similarly named biotechnology company Life Technologies India Pvt. Limited from using the "Life Technologies" mark and various related web domains.

Acquisition

In 2013 Thermo Fisher agreed to buy Life Technologies for $13.6 billion. They completed the sale on 3 February 2014, and the Life Technologies brand became part of the Life Sciences Solutions Group of Thermo Fisher Scientific.
Between its formation in 2008 and its acquisition by Thermo Fisher Scientific in 2014, Life Technologies Corporation was an independent multinational corporation based in Carlsbad, California, United States.

Legal disputes

A court case involving Life Technologies ended in January 2014, as the Connecticut District Court penalized Life Technologies Corp over $60 million for patent infringements by its parent companies prior to the merger. The jury awarded $48 million in royalty damages to the plaintiffs Enzo Biochem, Inc, Enzo Life Sciences, and Yale University.