On 9 October 2026 a federal judge in Delaware dismissed Onego Bio’s suit against The EVERY Company in its entirety. Both companies sell, or are about to sell, recombinant egg-white protein, and the headline reading is that EVERY won. The narrower reading is the one that matters to anyone buying the ingredient: the court made no finding on whether EVERY’s US patent 12,096,784 is valid, and none on whether Onego infringes it. The case failed at the threshold. The patent is exactly as strong, or as weak, as it was the day before.

This piece sets out what the order decided, what each side is now saying about it, which proceedings outside the US are still running, and what a formulator should and should not conclude.

What the order decided

According to AgFunderNews, the case was Onego Bio Inc v. Clara Foods (d.b.a. The EVERY Company), No. 1:25-cv-01131, before Judge Joshua D. Wolson in the US District Court for the District of Delaware. (Green Queen’s report spells the judge’s name once as “Wilson”; we use the AgFunderNews spelling, and the court’s own order was not available to us.) The memorandum and order was filed on 9 October 2026 and reported on 11 and 12 October.

Three findings carried the dismissal, as reported by AgFunderNews and Green Queen:

Claim by Onego Outcome Reported reason
Declaratory judgment that EVERY’s patent is invalid, unenforceable and not infringed Dismissed No subject-matter jurisdiction: EVERY had taken no action to assert its rights; “picking a fight with a perceived competitor isn’t enough”
False advertising (EVERY calling its proteins bio-identical to chicken egg proteins) Dismissed No statutory standing: Onego had no ongoing operations, so was not plausibly a competitor, and showed no injury
Tortious interference (EVERY allegedly telling investors Onego needed a licence) Dismissed Failure to state a claim; the investor statements were third-party hearsay with little probative value, and the court called them “puffing” rather than threats

The jurisdiction point is the one with consequences. A declaratory-judgment plaintiff has to show a real controversy. Here the judge found that Onego, not EVERY, was the instigator. Onego’s own press statement quotes the court as saying EVERY “never singled-out the ’784 Patent or accused Onego of infringing it.” That is a statement about what EVERY had done by the time of the suit, not a statement about what EVERY might do next. The order therefore leaves open whether EVERY could assert the patent against Onego later.

Practical consequence: do not read the dismissal as a freedom-to-operate opinion for either company. No court has said Onego’s Trichoderma reesei process falls outside the ’784 claims, and none has said it falls inside them.

The patent at the centre

Google Patents lists US 12,096,784 B2, “Protein compositions and consumable products thereof,” application number 18/614,611 filed 22 March 2024 and published 24 September 2024, originally assigned to Clara Foods Co. with “Every Co” shown as current assignee. The earliest priority date listed is 11 July 2019, and Google shows an anticipated expiration of 10 July 2040, with the caveat that this is an assumption and not a legal conclusion. Justia shows it as a continuation-in-part of earlier applications, including one filed 22 September 2023.

AgFunderNews describes it as EVERY’s “foundational” patent covering ovalbumin expressed in a range of hosts. The specification supports that breadth as a description: it lists Pichia, Saccharomyces, Trichoderma, Pseudomonas and E. coli as possible hosts, prefers Pichia pastoris or Komagataella phaffii, and gives sequence-identity thresholds for various embodiments (at least 70% and at least 95% identity to avian ovalbumin sequences in different passages).

What none of this tells you is what the granted claims cover. Neither Google Patents nor Justia returned the claims in the form we could read, and a description listing Trichoderma is not the same as a claim reaching Trichoderma-made ovalbumin. That distinction is the whole dispute, and it is why we do not draw a conclusion from the specification text alone. See the section on what we could not establish.

The two companies, side by side

The EVERY Company Onego Bio
Production host Komagataella phaffii (yeast) Trichoderma reesei (filamentous fungus)
Origin Founded late 2014 as Clara Foods Founded 2022, VTT spinout
Disclosed funding (court-filing figures reported by AgFunderNews) $233M $75M
Patent position as stated by the company 63 issued patents globally, 100+ pending (CEO Arturo Elizondo) Says its IP, built on VTT heritage, is strong and unchallenged to date
Commercial status as reported Product sold at Walmart, Target and Amazon (Green Queen) Says it ships “metric tons” of Bioalbumen; first named US customer Zen Waffles (unverified)
Manufacturing Exploring a 4-million-litre facility in the UAE with Vivici (AgFunderNews) Establishing a facility in Jefferson County, Wisconsin (AgFunderNews)

The funding and portfolio figures come from AgFunderNews’s reading of court filings and company statements, and the shipping claim is Onego’s own, which the trade press does not verify. For the regulatory and use-level side of Onego’s product see our analysis of its FDA letter and the Zen Waffles deal; for EVERY’s capacity disclosures see our piece on its OvoPro multiple.

How the dispute got here

The court filings reported by AgFunderNews give a short timeline:

  • May 2025: licensing and possible merger discussions begin, per EVERY’s 28 October 2025 filing. EVERY’s CEO says Onego initiated contact seeking a licence.
  • 5 September 2025: the parties agree to meet to discuss a possible merger.
  • 10 September 2025: Onego sues in the Western District of Wisconsin (No. 3:25-cv-00761), five days later.
  • 5 May 2026: Judge James Peterson dismisses the Wisconsin case for lack of personal jurisdiction, without reaching the merits. Neither company is incorporated or based in Wisconsin (AgFunderNews).
  • 9 October 2026: the parallel Delaware case is dismissed.

Onego has said EVERY sought “unwarranted patent licensing fees” and proposed a merger at a “severe devaluation”; EVERY’s filing says “Onego has at all times been the only antagonist and issuer of threats.” No licence-fee amounts or merger valuation appear in the coverage we read; AgFunderNews says the valuation sits in a filing the company asked to seal. Onego’s invalidity theory, as reported, is that Finland’s VTT research centre pioneered Trichoderma-produced recombinant ovalbumin before the 2019 priority date. EVERY’s counter, per the same report, is that it began filing on recombinant egg-white protein in Trichoderma reesei in late 2014. Both claims go to prior art and priority. Neither has been adjudicated.

Green Queen adds a labelling thread: Onego challenged EVERY’s “bioidentical” and “nature-equivalent” claims, saying EVERY’s protein contains up to 13 extra amino acids. That claim was dismissed on standing, not tested on its facts.

The foreign proceedings are still the live evidence

Onego’s statement lists three outcomes outside the US, repeated in the trade coverage:

  1. The Japan Patent Office and the Korean Intellectual Property Office rejected EVERY’s counterpart applications.
  2. Mexico’s industrial property institute objected to all pending claims.
  3. The European Patent Office issued a preliminary opinion that EVERY’s European claims contain added subject matter, which is a ground for revocation.

Two cautions. First, these are Onego’s characterisations, and the statement does not link to the office actions. We have not seen the decisions. Second, counterpart applications are separate legal documents from the US patent: a rejection in Tokyo or Seoul says nothing binding about a US grant, and a preliminary EPO opinion is not a revocation. They are useful as evidence of how examiners elsewhere read the same family, not as a prediction for the US.

Practical consequence: if you plan to sell recombinant egg protein in Europe, the EPO file is the document to follow, not the Delaware docket.

The counter-argument

The case for treating the dismissal as a clean win for EVERY is not weak. A court looked at Onego’s investor-interference story and found hearsay and puffery. It looked at the false-advertising claim and found a company with no operations and no injury. It declined to infer a threat from a patent portfolio that EVERY “touted” without pointing at Onego. On that reading, the patent family has now survived two jurisdictional challenges in two courts without having to be defended on the merits, and Onego has spent a year and two lawsuits without an opinion that helps its customers.

The case for treating it as neutral is that jurisdictional dismissals are not rulings on quality. EVERY has not asserted the ’784 patent against anyone in these proceedings, so the patent has not yet been tested. A company that wins by not being sued has not proved its claims hold.

Our reading sits closer to the second: the order removes one litigation, not the uncertainty.

What a formulator or buyer should do

This is our analysis, not legal advice, and we are not patent counsel.

  • Ask for the IP position in writing. Whichever supplier you buy from, ask whether the contract carries an indemnity against third-party patent claims and who bears defence costs.
  • Do not treat “no litigation pending” as “cleared.” Onego’s statement that no infringement claim or freedom-to-operate challenge remains is accurate only in the narrow sense that no case is open between the two companies.
  • Dual-source if volumes matter. Both firms sell into a category where supply is thin; a single-supplier dependency now carries an IP tail as well as a capacity tail.
  • Check the claims, not the abstract. Have counsel read the granted claims of US 12,096,784 against the actual production host and construct.

What we could not establish

  • The text of the granted claims of US 12,096,784. The pages we could read give the description, not the claims. We therefore do not say whether the claims reach Trichoderma-produced ovalbumin.
  • The court’s order itself. Our account of the reasoning rests on AgFunderNews, Green Queen and Onego’s statement. The judge’s name is spelled two ways across the coverage.
  • The Delaware filing date. The coverage we read does not give it; the Wisconsin suit was filed 10 September 2025.
  • The foreign office actions. We have not seen the JPO, KIPO, IMPI or EPO documents and rely on Onego’s account.
  • Whether either side will appeal or refile. No appeal is reported. Onego says it will monitor the foreign proceedings and concentrate on commercialisation; EVERY says it will “vigorously defend” its position.
  • Licence fee and merger terms. Not published in any source we read.
  • Onego’s “metric tons” shipping claim. The company’s own statement; not independently verified.
  • The $50 million investor claim. AgFunderNews reports EVERY disputing that an investor was weighing a $50M investment in Onego and withdrew over infringement concerns; the underlying evidence is not public in what we read.

What to watch

  • Whether EVERY asserts the ’784 patent or any family member against any producer, which would create the controversy the Delaware court found missing.
  • Whether the EPO moves from a preliminary opinion to a decision on EVERY’s European claims.
  • Whether a Japanese, Korean or Mexican refusal is appealed or narrowed by amendment.
  • Whether Onego’s Wisconsin facility is built, since the court noted Onego had not broken ground on a US facility when it sued.
  • Whether the two companies’ supply contracts begin to carry public IP-indemnity language.