Biomar Norway will appeal a court’s decision that it infringed a smoltification patent on the basis that a patent shouldn’t exist for the methodology concerned.
The company was judged to have infringed one of the two existing STIM patents in Norway, but this does not affect BioMar’s right to continue to produce and sell the current product portfolio for smoltification in any countries.
The company said it does not agree to have copied a technology protected by valid patents or carried out other wrongdoings by the launch of the previous version of its smolt transfer product Intro Tuning.
“BioMar Norway truly believes that a general known method to improve smoltification in aquaculture cannot be protected by a patent,” said Håvard Jørgensen, MD BioMar Norway and former Global R&D director in BioMar Group. “As an important contributor to innovation in the industry and a company with a strong record of developing patented technology, we fully respect intellectual property rights.”
He added: “We however believe that in this case, we have not infringed any valid patent as the fundamental knowledge existed both internally in BioMar and within the industry prior to the filing of the STIM patent in question. We have continued to develop an approach to aid the smoltification process and by our innovations contributed with new feeds and technology to improve both cost efficiency and biological impact.”
Both BioMar and two other feed companies have challenged STIM’s patent by filing oppositions at the European Patent Office (EPO). If the oppositions succeed this will automatically lead to revocation of STIM’s patent.
