E.I. du Pont de Nemours & Co. lost its bid to dismiss a protracted intellectual property dispute with a company that accused the Delaware chemical giant nearly a decade ago of improperly using and disclosing its proprietary information.

Charge Injection Technologies filed the lawsuit in state Superior Court, captioned Charge Injection Technologies v. E.I. du Pont de Nemours & Co., back in 2007. But the case has dragged along ever since, and CIT ran out of money to pay its original lawyers, who withdrew from the case in 2011.