[3] Gore promptly applied for and obtained the following patents: Another form of stretched PTFE tape was produced prior to Gore-Tex in 1966, by John W. Cropper of New Zealand.

However, Cropper chose to keep the process of creating expanded PTFE as a closely held trade secret and as such, it had remained unpublished.

The District Court held Gore's product and process patents to be invalid after a "bitterly contested case" that "involved over two years of discovery, five weeks of trial, the testimony of 35 witnesses (19 live, 16 by deposition), and over 300 exhibits" (quoting the Federal Circuit).

On appeal, however, the Federal Circuit disagreed in the famous case of Gore v. Garlock, reversing the lower court's decision on the ground, as well as others, that Cropper forfeited any superior claim to the invention by virtue of having concealed the process for making ePTFE from the public.

Gore next sued IMPRA, Inc., a smaller maker of ePTFE vascular grafts, in the federal district court in Arizona.

[13] Due to the high work hardening rate of PTFE, ePTFE is significantly stronger than the unstretched material.

On a microscopic level, this work hardening corresponds to the increasing crystallinity of PTFE as the fibrils untangle and orient upon the application of an external stress.

[12] The most common process used to produce large sheets of ePTFE at scale is a tape stretching process through the following steps: Factors such as strain rate, oven temperature, sintering time, and sintering duration can affect the specific properties of the resulting ePTFE sheet which can be tailored to match particular applications.

[15][12] PTFE is a fluoropolymer made using an emulsion polymerization process that utilizes the fluorosurfactant PFOA,[16][17] a persistent environmental contaminant.

[18] Gore pledged in 2017 to eliminate PFCs such as PFOA by 2023, although the core technology will continue to be based on PTFE,[19] which is a PFAS compound.

[20][21] Many Gore-Tex products have a durable water repellent coating and the version that do not contain PFCs of environmental concerns are marketed as "Gore PFCEC Free DWR".

They are used in a wide variety of applications such as high-performance fabrics, medical implants, filter media, insulation for wires and cables, gaskets, and sealants.

Before the introduction of Gore-Tex, the simplest sort of rainwear would consist of a two-layer sandwich, where the outer layer would typically be woven nylon or polyester to provide strength.

Without the DWR, the Gore-Tex layer would become soaked, thus preventing any breathability, and the wearer's sweat being produced on the inside would fail to evaporate, leading to dampness there.

Implementing and applying the mesh form in the medical field is a promising type of technological material feature.

[33] Gore-Tex is used in a wide variety of medical applications, including sutures, vascular grafts, heart patches, and synthetic knee ligaments, which have saved thousands of lives.

[34] In the form of expanded polytetrafluoroethylene (E-PTFE), Gore-Tex has been shown to be a reliable synthetic, medical material in treating patients with nasal dorsal interruptions.