Gurit says that although one of the subsidiary claims was deleted, the main claim of the patent, EP 1 128 958, was upheld as granted. In reaching this conclusion, the Technical Board of Appeal of the European Patent Office rejected Hexcel’s opposition to the patent.
Hexcel had appealed the earlier Opposition Division decision of January 2008 to uphold the patent.
Gurit's SPRINT® materials consist of a layer of fibre reinforcement either side of a precast, precatalysed resin film, with a light tack film on one face. Unlike conventional prepregs, SPRINT® fibres remain dry and unimpregnated by the resin until cured using vacuum bag processing.
