¿Biogen Inc., of Cambridge, Mass., said Judge Mark Wolf of the Federal District Court for Massachusetts granted a summary judgment that Biogen's Avonex (interferon beta-1a) product does not infringe either of the "McCormick" patents held by Berlex Laboratories Inc., of Richmond, Calif. The relevant patent numbers are 5,376,567 and 5,795,779. Peter Ginsberg, an analyst for Minneapolis-based U.S. Bancorp Piper Jaffray, called the judgment "by far, the best case scenario for Biogen," which now avoids a trial. The news was announced after the market closed Tuesday. Biogen shares (NASDAQ:BGEN) rose 4 percent Wednesday to $70.25.

¿Biomatrix Inc., of Ridgefield, N.J., is the defendant in a class action lawsuit filed on behalf of purchasers of Biomatrix common stock from July 20, 1999, through April 25.

¿Biomune Systems Inc., of Salt Lake City, and Donlar Corp., of Bedford Park, Ill., signed definitive agreements to combine their businesses. When the transaction closes, probably in the fourth quarter, Donlar will own approximately 95 percent of Biomune, with the resulting company to operate under the Donlar name. Earlier this month, Donlar acquired approximately 19 percent of Biomune for $1.1 million. Biomune specializes in biologic pharmaceuticals, foods and supplements based on whey protein technologies.

¿Copernicus Therapeutics Inc., of Cleveland, received a Phase I Small Business Innovation Research grant to support preclinical development of gene therapy treatments for breast cancer. The approach uses the company's REPLIsome Vectors for delivery of therapeutic genes to target cells.

¿GlycoDesign Inc., of Toronto, and Leo Pharmaceutical Products Ltd., of Denmark, formed a joint venture to develop drugs for the treatment of selected cardiovascular diseases. The companies will share equally the costs of preclinical and clinical development up to the commencement of Phase II trials; Leo has an exclusive option to commercialize drugs resulting from the collaboration in Europe and Canada. The companies are seeking a third-party collaborator to handle later-stage development of products and market them outside those regions.

¿IBM Corp., of Somers, N.Y., has formed a new life sciences business unit and is investing $100 million in bioinformatics. The move follows a $1.5 billion outsourcing agreement to provide information technology infrastructure for Aventis SA, of Strasbourg, France.

¿Luminex Corp., of Austin, Texas, entered a multi-year partnership with Life Technologies Inc., which will market reagents and instrumentation based on Luminex's LabMAP technology. LabMAP performs up to 100 assays simultaneously on a drop of fluid with the capability for both medium- and high-throughput assay application.

¿Myriad Genetics Inc., of Salt Lake City, will split its stock 2-for-1 Sept. 11, boosting the number of outstanding shares to 22 million. The split is in the form of a stock dividend, payable to shareholders of record as of Aug. 28.

¿Sangamo BioSciences Inc., of Richmond, Calif., successfully used zinc finger DNA binding proteins to activate expression of erythropoietin, the same therapeutic protein that generated $1.75 billion in 1999 sales for Amgen Inc., of Thousand Oaks, Calif. Sangamo's data will be published in The Journal of Biological Chemistry.

¿Targeted Genetics Corp., of Seattle, sold an additional $5 million in stock to Elan Corp plc, of Dublin, Ireland, in connection with the July 1999 establishment of a joint venture called Emerald Gene Systems. At $13.06 per share, the 382,739 shares were priced at a premium to Targeted Genetics' historical average closing price. The company's stock (NASDAQ:TGEN) closed Wednesday at $12.563, up 31.25 cents.

The Immune Response Corp., of Carlsbad, Calif., raised an additional $2.16 million through the underwriters' exercise of an overallotment option in connection with the company's Aug. 11 public offering. The exercise raised the offering's total to $16.6 million.