Butamax and Gevo grapple with biofuels patent case claims

Gevo temporarily dismisses GIFT® lawsuit because Butamax does not have a commercial biobutanol plant

Gevo, Inc., today announced that it has agreed to temporarily dismiss its lawsuit against Butamax Advanced Biofuels, LLC (Butamax) and E. I. du Pont de Nemours and Company (DuPont) for infringing one of Gevo’s three GIFT® patents, US Patent No. 8,101,808 ( ‘808 Patent). Gevo maintains all of its other lawsuits against Butamax and DuPont for infringing Gevo’s biocatalyst technology.

“When we filed this lawsuit, we expected Butamax to have a commercial biobutanol plant by now. We decided to dismiss the ‘808 lawsuit, for now, because Butamax doesn’t have a commercial plant that infringes the ‘808 patent and according to DuPont, they will not have a commercial plant by the time of the trial,” said Brett Lund, executive vice president and general counsel of Gevo.

At DuPont’s May 2, 2013 Analyst Day, a DuPont spokesperson said, “We would expect to start the first conversion in 2015.” “Butamax had stated plans to begin commercializing their biobutanol technology in 2010, and now this date has slipped to at least 2015,” said Lund. “Accordingly, it makes sense for us to hold off on this litigation for now and, in doing so, we will save significantly in legal costs,” continued Lund. “In addition to the ‘808 patent, we have two additional GIFT® patents that we have not yet asserted against Butamax and we are free to assert these at any time in the future. Additionally, Gevo is maintaining all of its other lawsuits against Butamax and DuPont for infringing our biocatalyst patents including our trial in August 2013 for infringing our ‘375 and ‘376 Patents.”

Source

Gevo, Inc., press release, 2013-05-10.

Supplier

Butamax
DuPont
Gevo Inc.

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