Lab-grown diamond patents at centre of Carnegie Institution suit
The technology behind lab-grown diamonds is at the heart of three lawsuits filed by the Carnegie Institution of Washington, an organisation established to fund and perform scientific research.
Yesterday, January 9, the Washington, DC-based institute filed three complaints at the US District Court for the Southern District of New York against several diamond companies, including Pure Grown Diamonds and IIa Technologies, accusing them of infringing its patents covering diamond technology.
Carnegie and M7D (the licensee of the patents) claimed that they are pioneers in the laboratory synthesis of high-clarity diamonds.
Diamonds are solid forms of carbon arranged in a crystal structure and can either be formed by the earth or in a laboratory, under certain conditions.
In 2018, the Federal Trade Commission changed the definition of the term “diamond” to remove the term “natural”, acknowledging that lab-grown diamonds have the same physical, chemical and optical qualities as diamonds mined from the earth.
“Carnegie invented and patented technology using a chemical vapour deposition (CVD) process, specifically a microwave-plasma CVD (MPCVD) process, to control diamond growth from a diamond seed, atom by atom, to the highest purity and quality,” said the complaint.
The patents, US numbers 6,858,078 and RE41,189, are allegedly being infringed by makers of lab-grown diamonds.
The ‘078 Patent teaches a method for producing MPCVD diamonds using, while the reissued ‘189 patent teaches the benefits of a method for improving the optical properties of a CVD diamond.
According to the suit: “The existence of the patents-in-suit are well known in the lab-grown diamond industry, and in particular are well known by lab-grown diamond manufacturers, importers, and sellers.”
The institute’s suit claimed that the chief technology of both Pure Grown Diamonds and IIa Technologies is a named inventor on at least seven patents relating to diamonds and that to have obtained these patents, the companies would have needed to conduct prior art searches of the technological field.
These searches would have brought the institute’s patents to light, according to the claim.
Now, the Carnegie Institution has asked the court to stop the defendants from infringing its patents through the sale of their lab-grown diamonds, in addition to an award of damages.
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