Matthias Kuhnt of German company Octopus Office contacted The Recycler after he received an email on behalf of Samsung notifying him about the legal action because of Octopus’ use of the chips.
The letter was sent on behalf of Samsung by the Netherlands office of legal firm AKD.
Kuhnt said: “I believe this was more of a friendly reminder in our case – Samsung letting us know that we are in their scope of attention.
“We intend to contact AKD and let them know we are aware of the situation and are paying attention. We want to avoid infringing any patents so we would also be interested in knowing more about the details.”
Kuhnt believes that the infringement relates to the newly released CLP-310 and CLP-315 Samsung toner chips, as TNIRP is the only company he is aware of that currently supplies them.
The notification letter from attorney Martin Hemmer states that TNIRP and certain distributors in Korea were notified of the alleged infringement.
“Subsequently most of the Korean distributors have stopped their distribution activities,” he said.
“Against TNIRP and a continuing distributor, Samsung has commenced legal action against their manufacturing, distribution and sale of the Resetter and/or the Chip on September 6 2010, in Seoul, Korea, and will pursue any other legal remedies available to us to protect out intellectual property rights.”
He concludes: “With this letter, we hereby inform you that Samsung takes protection of its intellectual property rights very seriously. Samsung currently investigates its legal position in Europe after which Samsung will enforce its intellectual property rights to the full extent allowed under the law.”
TNIRP has been contacted and has declined to comment. AKD has also been contacted and has yet to reply.
If you have been contacted by Samsung and would like to comment on the case, contact The Recycler news team.