WASHINGTON —The US Supreme Court decided not to hear a case regarding a patent dispute between an inventor and Hormel Foods Corp.

A petition was filed in August to examine the merits of a sole or joint inventorship of a patent method for producing pre-cooked sliced bacon.

During May 2023, the US Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit found that David Howard of HIP Inc. (also known as Unitherm) should not be added to the patent held by Hormel Foods.

Previous court documents and lawsuits showed that Howard developed a process for producing pre-cooked bacon in a spiral oven. He filed for a patent in February 2012, and it was granted on Dec. 6, 2016.

However, before Howard filed the patent, Howard approached Hormel to gauge interest in his bacon cooking system. Unitherm and Hormel entered into a joint development agreement in 2007.

Hormel ended the joint development agreement in April 2010 but had purchased the test oven before terminating that agreement, according to court documents.

Hormel eventually received a patent in 2018 that would cover the process. HIP then sued Hormel in a federal court in Delaware in 2021, where the court finally stated that Howard was to be named as a joint inventor. That decision was eventually reversed in May 2023.