BPI Energy Holdings, Inc. v. IEC (Montgomery), LLC

POSNER, Circuit Judge.

The plaintiffs, affiliated corporations that we’ll refer to jointly as BPI, are producers of “coal bed methane” gas, a form of natural gas present in coal seams. (Natural gas is methane. We’ll call coal bed methane gas simply “the gas”; the trade calls it CBM.) The defendants comprise a large private coal-mining company named Drummond Company, Inc., see www.drummondco.com (visited Dec. 5, 2011) and a number of limited liability companies created by and affiliated with it and unnecessary to discuss separately. For simplicity’s sake we’ll pretend that all the Drummond…