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Commitments and Contingencies
3 Months Ended
Mar. 31, 2018
Commitments And Contingencies Disclosure [Abstract]  
Commitments and Contingencies

8. COMMITMENTS AND CONTINGENCIES

Leases

The Company leases its operating and office facilities for various terms under long-term, non-cancelable operating lease agreements in Brisbane, California; West Chester, Pennsylvania; Fremantle, Australia; and Stockholm, Sweden.  The lease for the Company’s facility in Vienna, Austria is on a month-to-month basis. The leases expire at various dates through 2020.  In the normal course of business, it is expected that these leases will be renewed or replaced by leases on other properties.

Rent expense under the non-cancelable operating leases was $0.4 million and $0.4 million for the three months ended March 31, 2018 and 2017, respectively. Future minimum lease commitments under these operating and capital leases on March 31, 2018, are as follows (in thousands):

 

Years Ending December 31,

 

Capital

Leases

 

 

Operating

Leases

 

Remainder of 2018

 

$

74

 

 

$

1,657

 

2019

 

 

84

 

 

 

2,135

 

2020

 

 

79

 

 

 

2,090

 

2021

 

 

7

 

 

 

11

 

2022

 

 

 

 

 

8

 

Total future minimum lease payments

 

$

244

 

 

$

5,901

 

 

The current portion of obligations under capital leases is included in accrued and other liabilities on the balance sheets.  The long-term portion is included in other liabilities on the balance sheets.

Royalty Commitments

Roche Molecular Systems, Inc. (“Roche”)

In November 2004, the Company entered into a license agreement with Roche pursuant to which Roche granted the Company the right to use certain Roche technology relating to PCR, and quantitative real-time PCR in clinical laboratory services, including in connection with AlloMap.  This is a non-exclusive license agreement in the United States covering claims in multiple Roche patents.

Under the license agreement, the Company incurred royalty expenses as a percentage of combination services revenue and classifies those expenses as a component of cost of testing in the condensed consolidated statements of operations.  Royalty expenses in connection with the Roche agreement were $0.3 million for the three months ended March 31, 2017.  Effective September 30, 2017, no future royalties are payable by the Company under the Roche agreement.

The Board of Trustees of the Leland Stanford Junior University (“Stanford”)

In June 2014, the Company entered into a license agreement with Stanford, or the Stanford License, which granted the Company an exclusive license to a patent relating to the diagnosis of rejection in organ transplant recipients using dd-cfDNA. Under the terms of the Stanford License, the Company is required to pay an annual license maintenance fee, six milestone payment amounts and royalties in the low single digits of net sales of products incorporating the licensed technology. The license maintenance fee may be offset against earned royalty payments due on net sales in that year.

Commercial sales of AlloSure, which incorporates the licensed technology from Stanford, began in October 2017. In the three months ended March 31, 2018, the Company paid royalties of $0.1 million to Stanford.

Conexio

On January 20, 2017, the Company acquired the business assets of Conexio, which included machinery, facilities leases, know-how and the opportunity to retain key Conexio employees to continue producing and selling the SBT line of products. The Company makes quarterly payments to Conexio of 20% of the gross revenue from the sale of the SBT products using the purchased assets up to an aggregate total of $0.7 million.  During the three months ended March 31, 2018 and March 31, 2017, respectively, the Company paid less than $0.1 million and nil, respectively.

Litigation

On April 25, 2016, Oberland filed a breach of contract claim against the Company in the Supreme Court of the State of New York, County of New York (the “Complaint”).  Oberland alleged, among other things, that the Company breached certain provisions of the amended and restated commitment letter and the restated fee letter that it entered into with Oberland on February 8, 2016.

Effective as of March 2, 2017, the Company and Oberland settled the matters covered by the Complaint and the Company’s answer (the “Settlement”).  Pursuant to the Settlement, the Company paid Oberland $0.6 million in March 2017 and each party agreed to release all claims asserted in the Complaint and the Company’s answer to the Complaint.

From time to time, the Company may become involved in litigation and other legal actions. The Company estimates the range of liability related to any pending litigation where the amount and range of loss can be estimated. The Company records its best estimate of a loss when the loss is considered probable. Where a liability is probable and there is a range of estimated loss with no best estimate in the range, the Company records a charge equal to at least the minimum estimated liability for a loss contingency when both of the following conditions are met: (i) information available prior to issuance of the financial statements indicates that it is probable that a liability had been incurred at the date of the financial statements and (ii) the range of loss can be reasonably estimated.

In the normal course of business, the Company enters into contracts and agreements that contain a variety of representations and warranties and provide for indemnification for certain liabilities. The exposure under these agreements is unknown because it involves claims that may be made against the Company in the future but have not yet been made. To date, the Company has not paid any claims or been required to defend any action related to its indemnification obligations. However, the Company may record charges in the future as a result of these indemnification obligations. The Company also has indemnification obligations to its directors and executive officers for specified events or occurrences, subject to some limits, while they are serving at the Company’s request in such capacities. There have been no claims to date and the Company believes the fair value of these indemnification agreements is minimal. Accordingly, the Company has not recorded any liabilities for these agreements as of March 31, 2018 and as of December 31, 2017.