Tuesday, June 23, 2009

Conair Drops Lawsuit Against Novatec

It was announced today that the Conair Group, Inc. has dropped its patent infringement lawsuit against Novatec, Inc. which was filed on April 15, 2009. The dismissal has been ratified by US Federal Court in Pittsburgh, PA and signed by Conrad M. Bessemer, President of Novatec as well as Christopher Keller, President of The Conair Group, Inc.

In fact, this "lawsuit" was never served on Novatec, Inc. so that Novatec, Inc. never officially responded to this filing by Conair.

The filing by Conair generated alot of headlines because Conair claimed in their filing "that this was no ordinary patent infringement case" because of the involvement of Conrad M. Bessemer who was once the President of Conair North America and is now one of the owners of Novatec, Inc. In the end, we agree this was not "an ordinary patent infringement suit" because it was never served and had no basis in fact.

In fact, Conair management called the ownership of Novatec, Inc. only days after the article appeared in Plastics News in an effort to end the filing. In that discussion, it was revealed that Conair had never inspected any Novatec equipment before the filing. As a result, Novatec sent Conair their literature and manual for IntelliPET dryers. After reviewing this documentation, Conair asked that Novatec add ONE SENTENCE to their literature to make sure there was no misunderstanding. In return for adding this one sentence, Conair agreed to dismiss their lawsuit.

It is now absolutely clear that I never "took any technology" from Conair and that Novatec technology is totally different from the Conair patented dryer monitor.

What a lot of fuss over absolutely nothing!