Invista acquires Cone Denim's dual core patent portfolio

Invista, owners of the Lycra brand, along with Cone Denim and its parent company, International Textile Group, has announced that it is to acquire all of Cone Denim’s and ITG’s dual core patent portfolio.

The patent portfolio estate covers a broad variety of dual core yarns, fabrics, and garments made from those fabrics, which are sold in the US, China, and most recently, Europe, where Cone Denim’s dual core patent was granted in Europe.

"Given the growth of dual core technology in recent years, we are excited to add this technology to the Invista patent estate," said Jean Hegedus, director of Invista's denim business, who added that Invista sees this move as a “logical expansion” of its dual core portfolio.

Hegedus added: "We look forward to working with our customers and licensees to expand the Lycra dualFX fabric business.”

Invista was a pioneer in the development of dual core technology with its Lycra dualFX fabric concept, first introduced commercially in 2010, which encompasses stretch fabrics made with two stretch fibres, Lycra and Lycra T400 in a single yarn.

“This year marks the tenth anniversary of Cone Denim’s development of its dual core patented innovation, trademarked as SGene technology,” added Steve Maggard, Cone Denim’s senior vice president of operations. “Cone’s SGene technology integrates a stretch fibre, such as Lycra fibre, with an inelastic control filament. Cone is pleased to collaborate with Invista to provide a global platform to take this technology to the next level and will continue to produce yarns and fabrics made with the SGene technology under a license from Invista.”

Invista already offers a large variety of textile solutions including Lycra, Coolmax, Cordura, Stainmaster and Antron. While Cone Denim has been an innovator in the denim field for more than 125 years including offering collections of Selvage, Performance, Stretch and Natural Indigo denims crafted out of the Cone3D R&D incubator.