Innotron Sues Abbott Labs in Antitrust Case

Innotron Diagnostics Inc., a small, struggling Irvine medical supply maker, said Friday that it has sued giant Abbott Laboratories over alleged anti-competitive and unfair business practices.

The suit, which asks for no specific amount in damages, comes on the heels of Innotron’s announcement last week that it is within months of depleting its cash reserves and has suspended payments to some creditors to preserve what money it does have.

In the last two years, Innotron has lost $2.7 million and company President Donald Frank argued in an interview Friday that Abbott’s practices have hurt his company’s efforts to stage a turnaround. The complaint contends that Abbott has “intentionally disrupted and interfered” with Innotron’s attempts to sell blood testing kits that work with equipment manufactured by Abbott.

An Abbott spokesman at the company’s North Chicago headquarters declined Friday to respond to the charges, saying Abbott does not comment on pending litigation.

The issue centers on test kits that Innotron designed as lower-cost alternatives to those Abbott manufactures to work with its TDx blood testing machine. The machine is used by physicians to monitor the level of drugs in patients’ blood. Innotron’s kits work only with the Abbott machine and cannot be used on another system.

Frank said Innotron introduced kits last September to test the levels of six different medications, with the expectation that sales of the kits would contribute substantially to the company’s turnaround efforts and dominate its business this year.