After nearly three years of legal battles over patent infringement between Outlast Technologies and Frisby Technologies over the rights to “Phase Change Materials”, Outlast has bought substantially all of the assets of its competitor.

The purchase price was not disclosed, but the deal included various technology licenses, the “Thermasorb®” trademark, logo and website, the Frisby research and development library, product development databases, test reports and intellectual property rights in the field of phase change materials, customer and supplier databases, and office and lab equipment.

In October of 2001 Outlast Technologies filed a patent infringement suit in the Federal District Court of Colorado claiming Frisby’s ‘ComforTemp Non-wovens’ violated the Outlast patent for encapsulated phase change materials in non-woven fabrics.

Frisby in January won the first round of this suit, with the court granting Frisby’s motion for Partial Summary Judgment on Non-Infringement of the patent. Also in January, Frisby sold the ComfortTemp rights to Carl Freudenberg, a $900 million German company. Outlast is appealing the decision, and the litigation, now against Freundenberg, is expected to continue.

After nearly three years of legal battles over patent infringement between Outlast Technologies and Frisby Technologies over the rights to “Phase Change Materials”, Outlast has bought substantially all of the assets of its competitor. The purchase price was not disclosed , but the deal included various technology licenses, the “Thermasorb®” trademark, logo and website, the Frisby research and development library, product development databases, test reports and intellectual property rights in the field of phase change materials, customer and supplier databases, and office and lab equipment.

In October of 2001 Outlast Technologies filed a patent infringement suit in the Federal District Court of Colorado claiming Frisby’s ‘ComforTemp Non-wovens’ violated the Outlast patent for encapsulated phase change materials in non-woven fabrics.

More recently, Frisby won the first round of this suit. The court granted Frisby’s motion for Partial Summary Judgment on Non-Infringement of the patent. In the same release that announced the court’s decision, Frisby announced that it had sold the rights to ComfortTemp to Carl Freudenberg, a $900 million German company. Outlast is appealing the decision, and the litigation, now against Freundenberg, is expected to continue.

BOSS spoke with Outlast CEO Brad Poorman who said Outlast still considers the non-woven patent important, but he sees a lot of their programs moving towards fiber products.

“We’ll continue to fight this infringement case in court, but business has been growing so rapidly it’s hard to stay focused on the issue.” He said. “Both revenues and earnings are up for the first quarter in the triple digits, and we expect that to continue through the second quarter and the remainder of 2004.”