The U.S. District Court for the District of Delaware has ruled that Markforged has infringed four patents originally filed by Continuous Composites. The court’s ruling confirms that Markforged is not infringing on these patents and confirms the company’s position that the claims were baseless. As a result, only one patent remains, which was added to the case in February 2022, covering two patent claims filed by Continuous Composites.
The court issued its verdict following a recent “claims construction” case in which both parties argued for how key concepts of each patent should be interpreted. Based on these arguments, the court sided with Markforged over the interpretation of the terms described in the patents, with Continuous Composites admitting that four patents, consisting of 20 claims, should be dropped from the case.
As for the remaining patents and claims, Markforged announces that it will continue to aggressively defend the few remaining claims against us in this final patent.
In February this year The U.S. Patent Trial & Appeal Board (PTAB) of the United States Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) ruled in favor of Continuous Composites, denying six out of seven petitions filed by Markforged to review the Inter Partes Review (IPR). They challenged the validity of his core patent claims related to an ongoing patent infringement lawsuit with Continuous Composites.
The history of the patent dispute began in July 2021, when Continuous Composites filed a lawsuit against Markforged in court, accusing the company of infringing four US patents: 9,511,543, 9,987,798, 10,744,708 and 10,759,109. The first patent is from December 2016, the last one is from September 2020, and according to Continuous Composites, they are part of a larger group of nine patents and two pending patent applications that predate Markforged and cover technologies that are key to its business. In the lawsuit, Continuous Composites claimed that Markforged infringed on patents related to the processes and 3D printers that underpin the Mark Two, Onyx Pro, X5 and X7 systems.
Markforged was previously cleared of intellectual property infringement in a case against Desktop Metal in 2018.
Source: www.markforged.com