Success of Butamax in using IPRs against Gevo

Note the discussion of the success that Butamax has had against Gevo in IPR proceedings which appears in the post
Butamax Successfully Using IPR to Knock out Competitor Gevo’s Patents

Note several earlier posts on IPBiz, including that titled


Gevo suffers losses to Butamax at PTAB

which includes the text:


In a decision filed March 3, 2015 on an IPR filed by Butamax against Gevo's US patent 8,273,565, the PTAB found contested claims invalid. Butamax wins. Part of the decision involved a lack of support in provisional applications for later-filed claims. See IPR 2013-00539. The decision was written by Judge Kerry Begley.

Of relevance to this loss by Gevo, note the document at

http://fishpostgrant.com/wp-content/uploads/IPR2013-00539-Order-Conduct-Proceeding.pdf

Which suggests Gevo may not have the resources to continue fighting.

Law 360 covered a different defeat for Gevo at the hands of Butamax:

By Vin Gurrieri
Law360, New York (March 16, 2015, 7:14 PM ET) -- The Patent Trial and Appeal Board on Friday determined that Butamax Advanced Biofuels LLC has shown in an America Invents Act review that a renewable jet fuel patent belonging to rival Gevo Inc. is not patentable in light of prior art.

(...)



Separately, from a press release in May 2013, two years ago:



ENGLEWOOD, Colo., May 10, 2013 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Gevo, Inc. (Nasdaq:GEVO) today announced that it has agreed to temporarily dismiss its lawsuit against Butamax Advanced Biofuels, LLC (Butamax) and E. I. du Pont de Nemours and Company (DuPont) for infringing one of Gevo's three GIFT® patents, US Patent No. 8,101,808 ( '808 Patent). Gevo maintains all of its other lawsuits against Butamax and DuPont for infringing Gevo's biocatalyst technology.

"When we filed this lawsuit, we expected Butamax to have a commercial biobutanol plant by now. We decided to dismiss the '808 lawsuit, for now, because Butamax doesn't have a commercial plant that infringes the '808 patent and according to DuPont, they will not have a commercial plant by the time of the trial," said Brett Lund, executive vice president and general counsel of Gevo.

At DuPont's May 2, 2013 Analyst Day, a DuPont spokesperson said, "We would expect to start the first conversion in 2015." "Butamax had stated plans to begin commercializing their biobutanol technology in 2010, and now this date has slipped to at least 2015," said Lund. "Accordingly, it makes sense for us to hold off on this litigation for now and, in doing so, we will save significantly in legal costs," continued Lund. "In addition to the '808 patent, we have two additional GIFT® patents that we have not yet asserted against Butamax and we are free to assert these at any time in the future. Additionally, Gevo is maintaining all of its other lawsuits against Butamax and DuPont for infringing our biocatalyst patents including our trial in August 2013 for infringing our '375 and '376 Patents."




See also the 14 Feb 2012 post on IPBiz


Trouble ahead for Gevo's US 8,101,808?