Agilent Technologies last week filed a lawsuit with the California State Superior Court. Agilent, who specializes in laboratory support and research, is suing Twist Bioscience, the three-year-old DNA synthesis startup, "advertising that it’s semi-conductor technology can produce genes faster and more efficiently than older technologies, for alleged theft of intellectual property."According to the documents filed by Agilent, Twist Founder Emily Leproust “in a premeditated plan, stole industry-leading genomics technology from her longtime employer, Agilent Technologies, to start her own competitive company”. Agilent Technologies claims that these techniques which drew investors to Twist were taken from Agilent development labs during the last year of Leproust’s time with the company.In response to these allegations from Agilent, Leproust personally declined to comment while Twist released this statement, "Agilent’s claims are baseless and without merit, and Twist Bioscience intends to defend itself vigorously against them. Typical of much larger, less innovative companies, Agilent’s actions reveal an obvious attempt to stifle competition. Twist Bioscience believes that the marketplace is the best place to determine winners and losers."Leproust, who recently raised an additional $61 million series C in anticipation of a beta launch of Twist's new technology this spring, worked at Agilent from 2001 until April 2013, but Agilent claims that she filed articles of incorporation for Twist in 2012 . In 2013, Leproust left Agilent, provisional patents were filed by Twist's two other co-founders and Agilent made a $21m strategic investment in Twist rival, Gen9. In 2015, additional patents were filed and Twist’s Alpha launch was announced.

Agilent alleges that Lep roust used her knowledge of Agilent technology to create Twist and also hired employees from Agilent, which was in violation of her original employment contract. They also allege that she could not have developed the technology in the four months between leaving Agilent and when the co-founders filed for the patents.

Agilent, in order to prevent what it considers to be illegal use of its technology, is requesting an injunctive relief from the courts of California. The lawsuit specifies breach of contract, breach of duty of loyalty and misappropriation of trade secrets by Leproust and Twist Bioscience as well as 20 unnamed co-defendants .

Despite a bumpy start to their alpha product launch last year when not all customers received their orders and many orders were delayed, Twist ended the year shipping over 65m base pairs of DNA. Ginkgo Bioworks also committed to a huge purchase of 100m base pairs demonstrating that the new kid on the block is making headway in the market place. We’ve covered the fast growing market of DNA synthesis companies at SynBioBeta before.

These events have already stirred up a fair amount of coverage and so far one thing is clear, that this battle will be fought on two fronts, in the courtroom as well as in the marketplace.