Guardant Wins False Advertising Lawsuit Against Natera

A California jury has awarded Guardant Health $292.5 million in its false advertising lawsuit against Natera. This includes $175.5 million in punitive damages.

The Palo Alto, CA-based company said the jury found that Natera engaged in a deliberate campaign to mislead cancer clinicians about Guardant Reveal – Guardant Health's tissue-free minimal residual disease (MRD) test for early-stage colorectal cancer (CRC) – in favor of Signatera, Natera's competing product. 

Today's unanimous verdict holding Natera responsible for engaging in illegal and anticompetitive conduct represents a major victory for CRC patients who could benefit from our groundbreaking Reveal test, and we thank the jury and the Court for their careful consideration of our claims," said John Saia, Chief Legal Officer at Guardant Health, said in a release.

In a release Natera said “Today, a jury issued a decision in Guardant’s favor, the company said in a release. “We disagree with this decision and will ask the court to overturn it.”

Guardant Health first filed a complaint against Natera in 2021. In a release, Natera noted that it filed a complaint in 2021, too.

This isn’t Guardant Health’s first rodeo with litigation. In August of 2023, Guardant Health and Illumina settled litigation.

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The lawsuit claimed that Guardant Health’s founders Helmy Eltoukhy and AmirAli Talasaz, who both once worked at Illumina, took confidential documents from Illumina related to its gene-sequencing technology. The lawsuit also alleged the founders used secrets to obtain at least 35 patents.