IPEC grants Cloud Cycle’s declaration of non-infringement

In the dispute over a monitoring system for the transport of concrete, the IPEC has now granted the application for non-infringement filed by competitor Cloud Cycle. The case also involved infringement under the doctrine of equivalents.

Cloud Cycle has landed a win in its dispute with Verifi over slump-monitoring technology at the IPEC.

Verifi’s EP 1 720 689 protects a “method and system for calculating and reporting slump in delivery vehicles”. The exclusive licensee is US company GCP Applied Technologies, a provider of specialty construction chemicals and building materials and a brand of Saint Gobain.

The patent relates to concrete delivered to a construction site in a drum mixer truck. The chemical reaction which leads the concrete to set and then harden begins as soon as water is added. Therefore, the concrete must be delivered from the batching plant to the construction site and poured within a short period after the addition of water. The accepted industry measure of the consistency of concrete before it sets is known as slump. Verifi submitted that its patent promised increased accuracy in terms of sensing and determining slump.

Verifi claims infringement

Patent owner Verifi accuses Cloud Cycle of infringing a claim of EP 689 with its system for monitoring the properties of concrete in a concrete mixing truck. Initially, the original action began as a declaration of non-infringement launched by Cloud Cycle, but the court then treated it as a conventional infringement action. In its allegation of infringement, Verifi relied on infringement under the doctrine of equivalents, as explained by the Supreme Court in Actavis v Eli Lilly.

However, the IPEC came to the conclusion that Cloud Cycle had not infringed under the doctrine of equivalents (case ID: IP-2023-000104f).