Beijing Higher Court ruled in favor of the company in the Patent Infringement Case.
The Court claimed RephiLe’s products fall into the protection scope of Merck Millipore’s patent an ordered the firm to stop making and selling the product.
Court sum for damages
RephiLe Bioscience is based in Shanghai and on its website it claims it ‘specializes in designing and manufacturing innovative pure water systems and consumables, and other filtration and purification related products for the life sciences and biotechnology industries’.
Merck Millipore was also awarded an undisclosed sum of damages set by the court.
“We are pleased by the judgment rendered in this case,” said Bernard Arend, VP, Merck Millipore’s Lab Water Business.
“It is a positive indicator that Chinese authorities and the Chinese legal system recognize the importance of intellectual property rights for both foreign companies trading in the country and Chinese domestic companies trading globally.
Millions of dollars
“We invest tens of millions of dollars in research every year to create a portfolio of products superior to and differentiated from our competitors and we invest a significant amount of money to patent many of the inventions incorporated into those products. We will continue to actively protect our patents.”
Merck Millipore reserves the right to take action against any distributors of RephiLe products in any part of the world that continues to supply the infringing products covered by this judgment to the extent allowed by law.
Merck Millipore is the Life Science division of Merck KGaA of Germany.It’s HQ is in Massachusetts, US and it employs 10,000 staff across 66 countries. It saw revenues of €2.6bn last year and operates as EMD Millipore in the US and Canada.