Sartorius Stedim Biotech has entered into a patent cross-licensing agreement with GE Healthcare Life Sciences to further develop each company’s current and future bio-manufacturing technologies.

Sartorius has granted GE Healthcare a sublicense to certain patents held by the University of Maryland (UMBC) to which Sartorius has access under an exclusive license agreement with Fluorometrix, a spin-off of UMBC. The patent rights cover bioreactors with two optical sensors for monitoring biomanufacturing processes. GE Healthcare has granted Sartorius a sublicense to patent rights that it has licensed from SciLog Inc. covering technologies for the automated, aseptic transfer of solutions in bioprocessing applications. Financial terms were not disclosed.

“Signing this agreement represents our mutual respect for intellectual property. In the immediate term it will enable us to employ the technologies covered by the patents in the license agreements to further advance the controls of single use devices,” said Catarina Flyborg, general manager BioProcess Products at GE Healthcare Life Sciences. “Furthermore our customers will profit from the freedom to employ these proprietary control mechanisms, without violating patent rights, when sourced from either GE Healthcare Life Sciences or Sartorius Stedim Biotech.”

Reinhard Vogt, executive vice president of marketing, sales and services, Sartorius Stedim Biotech said, “Like GE Healthcare Life Sciences, we have primarily entered into these license agreements for the benefit of our customers. The agreement will enable both our companies to provide a greater selection of products as well as accelerate the development of new and innovative technologies for applications in the biopharmaceutical manufacturing industry.”