A basic indigo dyeing patent owned by DyStar Textilfarben GmbH & Co. Deutschland KG of Germany was invalidated last week by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit in Washington DC.
Last year, DyStar had obtained a jury verdict against Bann Quimica LTDA of Brazil and C.H. Patrick Co. of South Carolina that U.S. Patent No. 5,586,992 was valid and infringed.
The District Court had awarded $90,000 in damages and issued an injunction against sales of Bann Quimica's and C.H. Patrick's prereduced indigo solution product.
That injunction will now be lifted and the damages award reversed as the appellate court found all relevant claims of the DyStar patent invalid.
In addition, four days after the invalidity ruling in the United States, a court in Brazil followed suit and found the Brazilian version of DyStar's indigo dyeing patent invalid as well.
The DyStar patents related to using prereduced indigo solutions made by a special process to dye cotton materials. The patents were originally issued to DyStar's predecessor, BASF, after BASF had begun selling its indigo solution to textile dyers in the mid-1990s.
DyStar brought suit against Bann Quimica and C.H. Patrick four years ago, claiming that Bann and Patrick had infringed its patent without a reasonable belief that the patent was invalid.
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