Ecometal Owes $707,000 Over Dissolvable Drilling Tool Patents

Ecometal Inc. and its owner, Nick Yuan, must pay Terves LLC $707,207 in profits lost to infringing sales of Ecometal’s dissolvable cast magnesium, used to make tools such as frac balls and plugs for drilling oil and gas wells, a federal jury in Cleveland ruled.

But Ecometal and Yuan’s infringement of two patents covering dissolvable magnesium composites wasn’t intentional, jurors said April 27, according to a judgment Judge Donald C. Nugent issued Thursday in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Ohio.

Dissolvable drilling tools save drillers time and money because they “can be left miles below ground ...