Zenon wins a major round in patent dispute
Zenon Environmental, whose membrane water filtration technology is attracting worldwide attention, has convinced a U.S. district court that three of its water treatment patents are valid.
Oakville-based Zenon filed a patent infringement action in October 2003 against Warrendale, Penn.-based U.S. Filter, a subsidiary of Siemens. U.S. Filter responded by challenging the validity of Zenon’s three patents
But the U.S. court, following a two-day bench trial in San Diego late April, ruled on May 5 that the patents are indeed valid.
This is a bit of a complicated affair. The original patent suit resulted in a negative ruling in November 2004, which Zenon is appealing. But in January the company launched a different patent infringement action regarding another patent from the same patent family. Bottom line is that the recent ruling about the validity of Zenon’s patents bolsters this most recent court action (which is going to full trial in 2006) as well as the appeal of the first action.
Tyler Hamilton is senior energy reporter and columnist for the Toronto Star, Canada's largest daily newspaper. In addition to this Clean Break blog, Tyler writes a weekly column of the same name that discusses trends, happenings and innovators in the cleantech market. This blog is a personal project started in April 2005. It is not an official blog of the newspaper. Tyler can be reached at tyler@cleanbreak.ca