CHINA Petroleum & Chemical Corp. (Sinopec), Asia’s largest oil refiner, has denied violating intellectual property rights of INEOS after the Swiss-based chemicals company opened a case at a Beijing court.

    Subsidiary Shanghai Research Institute of Petrochemical Technology is being sued over technology related to the industrial chemical acrylonitrile, Sinopec said in a statement Friday.

    Acrylonitrile is a building block for carbon fiber widely used in products in the automotive, aerospace and defence industries.

    The subsidiary developed what became a core technology “after 50 years of research,” Sinopec, which lists shares in Hong Kong and Shanghai, said in the statement.

    “Sinopec has full proprietary intellectual property rights over such technology. There is no ground for the infringement alleged by INEOS,” Sinopec said.

    INEOS said a Sinopec unit, Sinopec Ningbo Engineering Co., had broken a long-established technology agreement which, together with trade secret misuse by other Sinopec companies, had enabled development of a series of new world scale acrylontirile plants without the consent or agreement of INEOS. (SD-Agencies)