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By Bloomberg

Kolon Industries Inc. admitted conspiring to steal DuPont Co.’s Kevlar trade secrets as a U.S. judge signed off on its plea agreement and $360 million penalty.

DuPont’s related lawsuit against Kolon was also settled at a hearing Thursday in federal court in Alexandria, Virginia. Terms of that agreement weren’t disclosed.

Kolon’s penalty in the criminal case includes an $85 million fine and $275 million in restitution to DuPont.

U.S. District Judge Anthony Trenga, before accepting the company’s guilty plea, said the case involved “brazen and blatant conduct.” Trenga said he was particularly troubled by the destruction of documents by Kolon employees after the lawsuit began.

The company sells the Heracron line of high-tenacity para- aramid fibers to compete with Kevlar.

The charges were initially filed against Gyeonggi, South Korea-based Kolon Industries Inc., which split into two public companies in 2010, Kolon Industries and Kolon Corp. The theft of secrets occurred before the split.

Kolon Corp. also pleaded guilty Thursday and other aspects of the settlement, including five years’ probation, apply to both companies.

Kolon’s guilty plea also covered attempts to steal trade secrets from a second company, Tokyo-based Teijin Ltd.

Prosecutors charged Kolon and five executives in 2012 with waging a multiyear campaign to steal secrets for the fibers used in body armor. The company sought to improve Heracron by hiring current and former employees of DuPont and Teijin as consultants and having them disclose proprietary information, prosecutors said.

The Kolon employees were fired and the cases against them remain pending.

Kolon and Wilmington, Delaware-based DuPont have battled over claims of trade-secrets theft for at least six years.

The criminal case is U.S. v. Kolon Industries, 12-cr-00137, and the civil case is DuPont v. Kolon, 09-cv-00058, U.S. District Court, Eastern District of Virginia (Alexandria).

Patents

Summit Therapeutics Gets Patent for Colon Bacteria Drug

Summit Therapeutics Plc has gotten a U.S. patent for a drug it developed to treat a stubborn type of bacteria that attacks the colon and has long been the bane of patients in hospitals and nursing homes, according to a statement by the company.

The U.S. Patent and Trademark Office granted Patent No. 8,975,416 to Summit Therapeutics for antibacterial compounds to treat the infection known as the clostridium difficile, or CDI.

The antibiotic “has the potential to treat initial infection and reduce rates of disease recurrence by being highly sparing of healthy gut flora,” Glyn Edwards, Summit Therapeutics chief executive officer, said in the statement.

The patent allows an exclusive period of use in the U.S. of the small molecule antibiotic SMT19969 in the treatment of CDI at least until December, 2029.

The company already has patent protection for the drug in other countries, including Japan.

For more patent news, click here.

Trademarks

Cadbury Clashes With Nestle in Bar Brawl at EU’s Top Court

The bar is low when it comes to legal battles between chocolate makers Cadbury Ltd. and Nestle SA.

After Nestle blocked Cadbury’s bid to trademark the color purple used for its chocolate wrappers, the U.K. unit of Mondelez International Inc. has turned the tables on its Swiss rival, opposing a similar attempt by Nestle to protect the shape of its KitKat bar.

Judges at the European Union Court of Justice in Luxembourg grappled with the latest dispute at a hearing on Thursday.

Nestle’s lawyer Simon Malynicz told the EU judges that the case isn’t about monopolizing shapes: It’s about a “highly recognizable and much loved” chocolate bar.

Cadbury, the U.K.’s biggest chocolate maker, is fighting Nestle’s 2010 application to trademark the four-fingered chocolate, which sold 40 million pounds ($61.4 million) worth of bars a year between 2008 and 2010 in the U.K., according to the tribunal which sought the EU court’s guidance last year.

The KitKat was first sold in Britain in 1935 by Rowntree & Co., a company later acquired by Nestle. The U.K. Trade Marks Registry turned down the application to protect the chocolate bar in the U.K. in 2013 following the opposition from Cadbury.

If the EU court backed Nestle’s position, it “would open the floodgates to the registration of marks lacking the essential function of a trademark,” Thomas Mitcheson, a lawyer for Cadbury, told the EU judges.

Nestle won a U.K. Court of Appeal ruling in October 2013 blocking Cadbury from obtaining a trademark for the color purple it uses to package its milk chocolate.

Mondelez was created in a split of Kraft Foods Group Inc. in 2012.

The case is C-215/14, Societe de Produits Nestle SA v. Cadbury UK Ltd.

For more, click here.

For more trademarks news, click here.

Copyright

Russia Amends Copyright Law to Enhance Online Music Rights

Changes to Russia’s copyright law became effective Friday, making it easier for holders of music copyrights to stop their works from being played online without their authorization, Billboard reported.

When a rights holder believes a website has posted music without permission, he can demand that it be taken down. While the site may oppose the request in court, if a website owner loses two legal challenges of this type, the website will be shut down, according to Billboard.

Up until now, the measures applied to video content, a change that came about in August 2013, the paper said. The new copyright amendments, extending the procedural relief to owners of music copyrights, were passed in November, 2014.

Prior to the adoption of the amendments, “online pirates ignored rights holders’ invitation to have dialogs,” said Alexei Kozin, general director of Russian music company Navigator Records, according to Billboard. “Now they are prepared to negotiate in a move toward making their operation legitimate.”

Pirate Bay Domain Decision Expected Soon, Torrent Freak Says

Pirate Bay, the embattled website that indexes digital content and lets visitors download and share music and movies -- to the vexation of copyright holders -- will soon know whether it can keep its Swedish domain names, Torrent Freak reported.

The Stockholm District Court is expected to rule in the coming two weeks on whether The Pirate Bay may retain two “.se” domain designations in an action brought against the domain administrator, claiming the use of the Swedish domains facilitates copyright infringement. The court heard arguments from the prosecutor and Punkt.se, the organization that controls Swedish domains, the newspaper said.

ThePirateBay.se and PirateBay.se are the websites being challenged by Swedish prosecutor Fredrik Ingblad.

Ingblad declined to comment, according to Torrent Freak.

“We believe it is wrong to pursue a legal action against a top level administrator like .se to take away a service from the Internet, Punkt.se’s Maria Ekelund said, Torrent Freak reported.

Police raided the Stockholm offices of Pirate Bay in December 2014, seizing computers and servers. The website went offline at that time, according to Torrent Freak.

‘‘There has been a crackdown on a server room in Greater Stockholm. This is in connection with violations of copyright law,’’ Paul Pinter, police national coordinator for intellectual property enforcement, said at that time, according to Torrent Freak.