Eastern District of Virginia federal judge Robert E. Payne denied two separate post-trial motions lodged by Kolon challenging the jury’s $920 million verdict in favor of DuPont for theft of trade secrets concerning Kevlar armor products. The court found sufficient evidence for a reasonable jury to have found in DuPont’s favor on its trade secret claims, on both liability and damages. DuPont’s suit alleged that the Korean manufacturer poaching DuPont workers in order to apply the company’s high-strength para-aramid Kevlar fiber technology to its own research and development efforts.
Kolon also has a related antitrust suit pending in the Eastern District of Virginia against DuPont, which originated as one of Kolon’s counterclaims in the earlier suit. That suit accuses DuPont of monopolizing the Kevlar fiber market through “exclusionary, predatory and unlawful business conduct,” as well as “para-aramid fiber patents, trade barriers, legislative protections and other high barriers to entry in the relevant market.”