COMMITMENTS AND CONTINGENCIES

3 Months Ended

Jun. 30, 2015

COMMITMENTS AND CONTINGENCIES [Abstract]

NOTE 12.

COMMITMENTS AND CONTINGENCIES

Commitments

Purchase Commitments. We have purchase commitments, consisting of supply and inventory related agreements, totaling approximately $4.4 million as of June 30, 2015. These purchase order commitments primarily include our purchase obligations to purchase VSpro specialty analyzers and related cartridges from SMB of Denmark through calendar year 2016.

Patent Licensing Agreement. From January 2009 to February 2015, under our license agreement with Alere, we licensed co-exclusively certain worldwide patent rights related to lateral flow immunoassay technology in the field of animal health diagnostics in the professional marketplace. The license agreement enabled us to develop and market products under rights from Alere in the animal health and laboratory animal research markets. In exchange for the license rights, we (i) paid an up-front license fee of $5.0 million to Alere in January 2009, (ii) agreed to pay royalties during the term of the agreement, based solely on sales of products in a jurisdiction country covered by valid and unexpired claims in that jurisdiction under the licensed Alere patent rights, and (iii) agreed to pay a yearly minimum license fee of between $0.5 million to $1.0 million per year, which fee was creditable against any royalties due during such calendar year. The royalties, if any, were payable through the date of the expiration of the last valid patent licensed under the agreement that includes at least one claim in a jurisdiction covering products we sell in that jurisdiction. The yearly minimum fees were payable for so long as we desire to maintain exclusivity under the agreement. Effective February 2015, we terminated our license agreement with Alere. In accordance with the terms of the license agreement, we had no outstanding liabilities related to this license agreement as of June 30, 2015.

Litigation

We are involved from time to time in various litigation matters in the normal course of business. There can be no assurance that existing or future legal proceedings arising in the ordinary course of business or otherwise will not have a material adverse effect on our business, consolidated financial position, results of operations or cash flows.