Brett Lund, Executive Vice President, General Counsel, Gevo.
ENGLEWOOD, US: Gevo Inc announced that a judgment of non-infringement will be entered for Gevo following the acknowledgment by Butamax Advanced Biofuels LLC that Gevo does not infringe Butamax’s asserted patents under the Court’s construction of a key claim term in Butamax’s Patent Nos. 7,851,188 and 7,993,889. As a result of this victory, a judgment of non-infringement will be entered in Gevo’s favour and the trial scheduled for 1 April 2013 will no longer take place.
The judgment of non-infringement comes on the heels of the Court’s important claim construction determination which held that Butamax’s Patent Nos. 7,851,188 and 7,993,889 require the use of an ‘NADPH-dependent’ KARI. Butamax conceded that it could not establish that Gevo’s KARI is NADPH-dependent.
“We have consistently maintained that we do not infringe any Butamax patents and Butamax’s concession resoundingly validates our position. Gevo continues to demonstrate that it does not infringe Butamax’s patents because Gevo created an NADH-dependent KARI enzyme that enables Gevo’s yeast strains to produce isobutanol at much greater efficiencies than strains using the NADPH-dependent enzymes claimed by Butamax. We fully expect Butamax will appeal to the Federal Circuit, but we are confident in the merits of our case,” said Brett Lund, Executive Vice President, General Counsel, Gevo.
In addition to granting a judgment of non-infringement, the Court invalidated Butamax’s patent claims for the deletion of PDC enzyme, which is responsible for making ethanol and its deletion is required for the commercially viable production of isobutanol. Gevo’s patents covering the deletion of PDC and the use of AFT are set for trial in August 2013, where Gevo is suing Butamax for patent infringement.
© WOC News