Infringement Cases Advance

Two patent infringement cases have progressed through the courts. In one, the U.S. Court of Appeals upheld a lower court damage award of $154 million against Shell Chemical and in favor of Dow Chemical subsidiary Union Carbide. Shell wanted to overturn a jury verdict that it had infringed Carbide patents for making ethylene oxide. The appeals court remanded the case back to U.S. district court and told it to consider increasing the award to account for exports of catalysts used to make ethylene oxide. In the other case, Chevron Phillips Chemical has agreed to drop a suit against BASF after the latter showed that its patents on certain styrene-butadiene co-polymers do not infringe Chevron Phillips' patents.