Beijing Higher Court Rules in Favour of Merck Millipore in Patent Infringement Case

Merck Millipore, the Life Science division of Merck KGaA today announced that the Beijing Higher Court, Beijing, China has affirmed a lower court’s decision against RephiLe Bioscience for copying and selling purification cartridges for lab water systems, infringing on patents owned by Merck Millipore. The Court determined that RephiLe’s accused products fall into the protection scope of Merck Millipore’s patent.  The decision upholds the permanent injunction against RephiLe to discontinue making, selling and offering to sell the infringing products. The decision also confirmed the award of damages to Merck Millipore originally set by the lower court. 

“We are pleased by the judgment rendered in this case,” noted Bernard Arend, VP of Merck Millipore’s Lab Water Business. “It is a very positive indicator that Chinese authorities and the Chinese legal system recognise the importance of intellectual property rights for both foreign companies trading in the country and Chinese domestic companies trading globally.  We invest tens of millions of dollars in research every year to create a portfolio of products superior to and differentiated from our competitors.  In addition 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 continue to supply the infringing products covered by this judgment to the extent allowed by law.