As you can see, ICM and the founder, Dave VanderGriend are the main defendants. 15 other ethanol plants were originally sued. Two have settled so far, including a producer using Edeniq's equipment and another producer using ICM's equipment. PEIX is using equipment from both ICM and Edeniq, without a license from GERS.
The defendants argued that all of the patent claims require the concentrate or syrup after the oil recovery step to be substantially free of oil. The court disagreed and held that none of the claims of the ’858 Patent have this requirement and only claim 7 of the ’516 Patent and claim 8 of the ’484 Patent require that the post-oil recovery step syrup stream be substantially oil free.
Accordingly, the term “substantially oil free” was interpreted according to the ordinary meaning of largely and mostly oil free but is measured by a comparison of the oil concentration in the incoming thin stillage and the oil concentration in the resulting syrup
In the previous post, ICM(AOS) and Edeniq(Oil Plus) are clearly extracting oil from syrup. This is what GERS' patented.
“We are very pleased with the Court’s ruling,” said David Winsness, GreenShift’s Chief Technology Officer and co-inventor of its patented corn oil extraction technologies. “We have looked at the so-called advanced oil, oil plus, COSS and such other attempts to work around our patents. We are highly confident, and even more so with this latest ruling, that all such attempts plainly infringe our patents.”
Winsness continued: “Ethanol managers, board members, owners, lenders and other stakeholders that have adopted ‘wait-and-see’ infringement strategies are encouraged to pay careful attention to these events. Licensed producers receive a significant competitive advantage that we have pledged to vigorously defend. We will continue to do so and now look forward to expanding our efforts in the coming months.”
I believe the court ruling has enboldened GERS' to expand the litigation to include PEIX, REX, and VLO in the coming months.
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