Recently, the U.S. International Trade Commission (ITC) made a determination to allow Cargill Incorporated (hereinafter Cargill) to withdraw its case against a Chinese company called Nantong Foreign Trade Medicines & Health Products Co., Ltd. (hereinafter Nantong Medicines).
Cargill filed a complaint before ITC in January of 2009. The complaint alleged that the sale of D-non-shellfish glucosamine hydrochloride by Nantong Medicines infringed Cargill patent No.7049433. Therefore Cargill requested the ITC to issue both general and limited exclusion orders.
In early March, Nantong Medicines defended itself alleging that there is no infringement and the patent is invalid. During the cross-examination stage, Nantong Medicines brought 300 sets of materials and 12 boxes of evidences to challenge the patent. In June, Cargill withdrew the case before ITC, and at the same time, Cargill withdrew its infringement case against Nantong Medicines before the Federal District Court in New Jersey.
It is rare that the whole process before ITC took only 4 months and cost about 500,000 USD.
