China Petroleum & Chemical Corp (Sinopec), Asia's largest oil refiner, has denied violating intellectual property rights of INEOS after the Swiss-based chemicals company opened a case at a Beijing court. Subsidiary Shanghai Research Institute of Petrochemical Technology is being sued over technology related to the industrial chemical acrylonitrile, state-owned Sinopec said in a statement to Reuters. The subsidiary developed what became a core technology "after 50 years of research. Sinopec has full proprietary intellectual property rights over such technology. There is no ground for the infringement alleged by INEOS," Sinopec said.
INEOS said a Sinopec subsidiary Sinopec Ningbo Engineering Company had broken a long established technology agreement which, together with trade secret misuse by other Sinopec companies, had enabled development of a series of new world scale Acrylontirile plants without the consent or agreement of INEOS.
INEOS said it is pursuing parallel actions in the Beijing High Court and through arbitration in Sweden.
24-Mar-14 
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