The wedding between Omax Corp. and Flow International Corp. is off, but the former legal combatants are holding true to plans to end their long-running patent dispute. The waterjet cutting system manufacturers on Wednesday abandoned a nearly 18-month-old merger agreement in which Flow was to acquire Omax for $109 million in cash and stock. The deal received Federal Trade Commission approval in July 2008, but by then the credit market had dried up.
In a statement, Omax chief executive John Cheung said, "Due to the risk and difficulties of obtaining financing inherent in today's capital markets, Flow elected to abandon the proposed merger between our companies." At the same time, Omax agreed to settle the outstanding patent litigation against Flow.
The fortunes of the Kent, Wash., rivals have
long been intertwined. John Olsen started Flow in the 1970s and co-founded Omax in 1993. Within a year, Omax filed a patent infringement suit against Flow and the legal volleying continued until the merger agreement in December 2007.
- Suzanne Stevens
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