Patent litigation delays Datong’s results

ON-GOING patent infringement litigation has forced Datong to postpone announcing its year end results until the end of next month.

In March, the Leeds-based firm, which designs and manufacturers high performance security equipment, said that it would appeal against a High Court ruling that it had infringed a product patent.

A court hearing had been scheduled for June 26. Datong said that it is important that it understands the outcome of the hearing before announcing its results for the year ended March 31, 2009.

Datong earlier said that the verdict, which relates to a third party product for which it was a reseller, was unexpected and that costs were “inevitably” going to impact on its results.

It had expected to make sales of around £3m of the product but the recent ruling meant this was unlikely to happen, although the judgement only restricts the firm’s ability to sell the product in the UK.

However, in a statement today Datong said that it was confident that any such products used or sold for use outside of the UK would not infringe the patent.

As such, it has now resumed its sales activities in those markets and is expecting to receive a number of orders in the near future.