On Friday, February 17, 2023, after almost seven years of litigation against Element Six Technologies Ltd (“Element Six”), the Court of Appeal issued its decision and allowed IIa Technologies’ appeal. IIA Technologies has finally been vindicated. Two of Element Six’s patents that were asserted against IIa Technologies were revoked by the Singapore Court.
Element Six lost its first patent on February 7, 2020, when the Honourable Justice Valerie Thean found that Element Six’s Singapore patent number 110508 (“SG508”) was invalid and ordered the patent to be revoked. SG508 related to the heat treatment of CVD diamonds to change its colour. IIa Technologies’ full statement in relation to the revocation of SG508 can be found here.
On 17 February 2023, the Singapore Court of Appeal comprising the Honourable Chief Justice Sundaresh Menon, Justice of Appeal Judith Prakash and Justice of Appeal Steven Chong unanimously found that the other Element Six’s patent in the suit, Singapore patent number 115872 (“SG872”) was invalid and ordered the full revocation of the patent. SG872 concerned the production of CVD Diamond material for use as gems and in optical applications.
In a 126 page decision issued on February 17, 2023, the Court of Appeal found that SG872 was invalid on two grounds of insufficiency and therefore should be revoked in full. In its decision, the Court of Appeal also overturned the High Court of Singapore's finding of infringement. The Court of Appeal is the final appellate Court in Singapore. Its decision represents the final decision in this matter.
IIa Technologies has consistently and vigorously defended its rights to commercialise its proprietary, trade secret process for manufacturing lab grown diamonds using CVD technology. The R&D that led to that trade secret process began many years ago, involving a significant investment of time and resources, as well as millions of dollars. Prof. D. S. Misra, CTO of IIa Technologies, recently commented: “Not only have the patents been revoked but we are especially grateful that Court of Appeal has overturned the findings of infringement as well. While the past seven years have been long, we do feel fully vindicated now that the process has been finally concluded in IIa Technologies’ favor.” The judgement can be downloaded
here.