Court rejects Continuous Composites’ patent claims against Markforged
One recently added infringement claim, comprising two patents, still remains
The United States District Court for the District of Delaware issued a ruling eliminating all four patents originally asserted by Continuous Composites against Markforged in July 2021. The court ruling confirms that Markforged does not infringe on these patents and supports Markforged’s position that these claims were meritless.
Over the past few years, Markforged has emerged as a leader in the continuous fiber composites 3D printing hardware market and a relevant player in the metal AM market (where the company has faced a patent infringement case again Desktop Metal), with yearly revenues topping $100 million. Continuous Composites is still a relatively small company in the continuous composites AM market landscape.
This outcome stems from a recent “Claim Construction” proceeding where both parties presented arguments for how the key concepts of each patent should be interpreted. Based on the arguments presented, the court sided with Markforged’s interpretation of a phrase in the patents. Following this ruling, Continuous Composites conceded that the four patents comprising a total of twenty patent claims should be removed from the case. Currently, only a single, recently-issued patent that was added to the case in February 2022, comprising two patent claims asserted by Continuous Composites, remains.
Markforged maintains its position that it does not infringe this last patent, and will continue to defend against the remaining claims. The company is focused on serving the more than 10,000 global manufacturers who rely on Markforged technology every day to produce mission-critical parts directly at the point of need.
“We are very pleased with this ruling, which largely validates Markforged’s position that we do not infringe any of Continuous Composites’ patents,” said Shai Terem, President and CEO of Markforged. “From the start, we believed the Continuous Composite lawsuit to be meritless, and it is gratifying to see this bear out as the case progresses. After this ruling any potential exposure related to the matter is limited to the one remaining patent. We plan to continue to mount an aggressive defense of the couple remaining claims against us in this final patent.”
