Nishita Doshi, like many patent attorneys, chose law as a second career after completing her Ph.D. in Molecular Biology at Tufts University. She obtained her JD from Stanford Law School in 2004, and then practised patent litigation before going in-house to Invitrogen, which later became Life Technologies. She remained at the company after its acquisition by Thermo Fisher in various roles, supporting various divisions including its next-generation sequencing, Affymetrix and rapid diagnostics units. She left Thermo Fisher in 2021 to join Natera as VP & Chief IP Counsel with responsibility for managing, among other things, a busy patent litigation docket. Since she joined Natera, the Natera IP team has successfully managed three of Natera’s cases to trial over the last year, and won for Natera a permanent injunction against Invitae and its subsidiary ArcherDx in a trial that was recognized as a “Patent Impact Case the Year” at the annual LMG Life Sciences Awards in 2023, a preliminary injunction against NeoGenomics, and a jury verdict against CareDx awarding Natera lost profits of almost $100M. Natera has also successfully defended Natera in patent infringement lawsuits filed by CareDx and Ravgen. Natera invalidated all three patents asserted by CareDx against Natera under Sec. 101 on summary judgment, a result that was affirmed by the Federal Circuit in CareDx v. Natera (2022). The Ravgen trial resulted in a jury verdict awarding Ravgen a fraction of the $410M amount that Ravgen sought and rejecting Ravgen’s claim for willful infringement, a result that drove Natera’s stock 10% higher that day and increased its market cap by $700M.
