COPAN Announces Lawsuit for Patent Infringement and Unfair Competition Against Puritan Medical Products Co., LLC and Puritan Diagnostics LLC

BRESCIA, Italy, June 4, 2018 /PRNewswire/ -- COPAN Italia S.p.A. and its U.S. subsidiary, COPAN Diagnostics, Inc. announced today that they have filed a lawsuit against Puritan Medical Products Co., LLC and Puritan Diagnostics LLC, in the United States District Court for the District of Maine for infringement of U.S. Patent No. 8,114,027, U.S. Patent No. 8,317,728, U.S. Patent No. 8,979,784, U.S. Patent No. 9,011,358, and U.S. Patent No. 9,173,779.

COPAN is the global leader in preanalytical collection and transport devices serving the microbiology and medical communities. The lawsuit addresses Puritan's pervasive and willful infringement of patents covering COPAN's core flocked swab technology, as well as Puritan's false and misleading public statements concerning its flocked swabs and COPAN's intellectual property. "The scientific community and market universally recognize COPAN's founder, Daniele Triva, as the inventor of flocked swabs for collecting biological specimens. That invention, in 2003, revolutionized the industry," said Lorenzo Fumagalli, COPAN's General Counsel. "Since then, COPAN has invested an enormous amount of time and resources to develop, manufacture, and patent these innovative solutions, as well as to convince an initially skeptical market to adopt them. We will not tolerate the violation of COPAN's valuable intellectual property rights and intend to pursue all appropriate legal avenues to stop those who we believe are doing so."

"We have arduously worked to establish our brand and we object to products purposely designed to confuse the market. We take IP seriously and we will vigorously defend ourselves against anyone, we believe, is infringing it," concluded Norman Sharples, COPAN Diagnostics, CEO.

About COPAN Group.
With a reputation for innovation, the family-owned COPAN Group is the leading manufacturer of collection and transport systems in the world. COPAN's collaborative approach to innovation in pre-analytics has resulted in the original FLOQSwabs™, ESwab™, FecalSwab™ and UTM™, as well as Full Laboratory Automation. COPAN's collection and systems have been proven to advance the quality of traditional and contemporary microbiology assays. With 60 colleagues throughout the US, and a network of strong partners, COPAN Diagnostics is a subsidiary of COPAN Group to serve customers throughout North and South America. For more information, visit www.copangroup.com.

CONTACT: Gabriela Franco, Marketing Director, (800) 216-4016, Gabriela.franco@copanusa.net