A battle of giants: the multiplicity of industrial R & D that produced high-strength aramid fibers

There have been several long and expensive legal disputes on important resu lts of industrial R&D. These disputes are often very destructive for all pa rties involved; the lawsuits are very expensive, market development for new products suffers from the uncertainty of uninterrupted supply, and the par ties involved are often forced to publish technological and trade secrets, thereby helping third parties. This article analyses the R&D, starting shor tly after World War II, that led to high strength/high tenacity aramid fibe rs in the 1970s and 80s. The development of these fibers led to an enormous patent litigation case between the chemical giants Du Pont (US) and AKZO ( Europe). This paper will show that industrial research and development, esp ecially pioneering research, is not so straightforward as is supposed in in ternational patent law: often research findings cannot be covered easily an d effectively with patents; "inventions" are often the result of research f indings in various laboratories. Competitors can often improve on the produ ct or the process, and thereby claim patent licenses. Therefore, patent rig hts are in practice more or less a matter of negotiation while the legal si tuation is often rather unclear. This paper will briefly describe how, amon gst others, Du Pont, Monsanto, AKZO, and the Soviet VNIIV and VNIISV instit utes contributed to the creation of various high performance aramid fibers. It will also describe how the patent litigation struggle between AKZO and Du Pont started, and will finally evaluate this battle of giants, which cos t the parties about US$200 million only for lawyers, and probably a multipl e of that amount to cover other expenses. (C) 1999 Elsevier Science Ltd. Al l rights reserved.