The owners of the patent rights, STIM and MariCal, brought the case to court in the US, despite that the incidents in question were related to operations also in Chile and Canada. The parties have agreed to keep the particulars of the settlement confidential.
"We are satisfied with reaching an agreement that ends a long-lasting dispute," says STIM CEO Jim-Roger Nordly.
SuperSmolt and its successor SuperSmolt Feed Only, which was launched in 2014, is today widely used in all major salmon producing countries. The technology contributes to the production of earlier and bigger smolts, reduces mortality, betters fish welfare and leads to significantly higher growth performance after sea transfer.
"We have spent great resources, over many years, on our R&D efforts to create biologically based technology aimed at improved production, lower mortality and higher growth performance in aquaculture. It goes without saying that our efforts don’t always pay off, and the patent institute is created to protect new ideas and concepts that might, and to be an incentive to continue the development of such. Together with MariCal we have succeeded in actually bringing the aquaculture industry a significant step forward," says Nordly.
MariCal is a bio-technology company operating in animal health and nutrition and were behind the development of the original SuperSmolt concept. STIM (previously Europharma) bought the rights to the technology in 2008 and preceded to develop SuperSmolt Feed Only, launched in 2014.
