Milliken files lawsuits to halt intellectual property infringement
Milliken & Company has filed several lawsuits to protect the intellectual property embodied in its Millad clarifying agents. The company is taking vigorous action against several companies that Milliken believes have infringed one or more of Milliken’s patents through the sale of competitive 3,4 DMDBS products.Â
Milliken has filed several lawsuits against several Asian companies worldwide and will be seeking monetary damages and other appropriate remedies from the suppliers of these competitive 3,4 -DMDBS products.
“Our customers need to be aware of this IP infringement,” says global Millad product line manager Wim Van de Velde. “We believe our customers respect the intellectual property rights of others just as Milliken does and we are confident they do not wish to use products from companies that have engaged in patent infringement. Our actions reflect Milliken’s corporate policy to vigorously protect and defend the intellectual property underlying its innovative products.” Milliken owns a wide variety of IP around its Millad products post 2020. The patents involve several around 3,4- DMDBS in a variety of end use applications, 3,4 -DMDBS in blend solutions as well as several issued and pending patents around the aesthetic enhancement package in clarifiers and nucleators.
Over the past 20 years, Milliken invented sorbitol-based clarifying agents and has continued to innovate with the development of Millad NX 8000, a nonitol-based clarifying agent. Over the past year Millad NX 8000 has rapidly taken over Millad 3988 as the clarifier of choice. Millad NX 8000 offers revolutionary clarity in polypropylene allowing it to reach the clarity of glass like polymers while maintaining the inherent properties of polypropylene.
This allows companies to substitute other materials like polystyrene and polycarbonate with lower density polypropylene thus resulting in a more sustainable solution with lower carbon footprint. Moreover because of its better solubility in polypropylene vs traditional clarifiers Millad NX 8000 allows PP to run at lower temperatures while maintaining the optics, resulting in cycle time reductions of 10 % and up and energy savings of 7 % or more. As a result, Millad NX 8000 is used commercially in a wide variety of PP applications (eg totes, food storage containers, thin wall packaging, shampoo bottles, fruit blenders, caps and closures) and is considered the clarifier of choice for any new transparent PP application.