Tough talk from Gevo about Butamax

One week ago Brett Lund, Gevo's Executive Vice President and General Counsel, minimized Butamax's additional patent infringement action against Gevo:


The claims in the '328 Patent [US 8,178,328  ] are virtually identical to the claims in Butamax's earlier-issued 7,851,188 Patent ('188 Patent) which were recently rejected and declared unpatentable by the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office during reexamination.  The '328 Patent issued from a child application of the '188 Patent and purports to cover engineered isobutanol-producing microorganisms."

Like Butamax's '188 Patent, the technology described in the '328 Patent was invented by others and repeatedly described in journal publications dating back to the 1960s. We will request reexamination of the '328 Patent using similar arguments and are extremely confident that the outcome will be the same."

See  Gevo Dismisses Butamax Patent Infringement Lawsuit; Scope Mirrors '188 Patent Previously Rejected by USPTO  .  In the week since May 15, Butamax does not seem to have issued a formal response to Mr. Lund.

Re-exam request 95/001,857    was filed on 19 December 2011.  On a previous request, see IPBiz post

 Gevo's inter partes re-exam request as to US 7,851,188