The OEM has been granted a preliminary injunction against Consumable Direct Ltd relating to the dongle gear case.
The District Court of Dusseldorf
Canon announced it had been granted “an ex parte order” by the District Court of Dusseldorf for a “preliminary injunction” against Consumable Direct Ltd., trading under ‘Colour Direct’. This injunction was “granted based on the alleged infringement of the German portion of Canon’s European patent” EP 2 087 407, relating to a “drum unit and a process cartridge by, inter alia, the offer and sale of certain toner cartridges for use in various models of Canon and HP laser beam printers”.
The OEM is seeking “preliminary injunctive relief and rendering of commercial information”, and also added its usual statement in relation to legal cases, noting that “throughout the development, sales and marketing process, Canon respects the intellectual property rights of other companies and individuals and expects others to do the same. Canon remains committed to taking legal action against anyone who does not respect Canon’s intellectual property rights”.
The patent at the centre of the case was also used by Canon in a wide range of other European cases in 2014, 2015 and 2016, against: Armor, Artech and Pelikan; Aster in the Netherlands; KMP and wta as well as tintenalarm.de in Germany; European Cartridge Warehouse Limited and Printer Supplies Technology Limited in the UK; Zephyr SAS and Aster in France; X-Com Shop Ltd. and OOO “Softrade” in Russia; and last year, J&H Greentech & Trading Ltd in Italy.
The OEM reported in May 2014 that it had filed two patent infringement suits in Germany at the District Court of Dusseldorf against wta Carsten Weser GmbH and KMP PrintTechnik AG for “infringement of the German portion” of a European patent covering drum units in toner cartridges. In June this year, The Recycler reported that both companies had launched an appeal against the case in Germany.
The OEM also began a dongle gear case at the United States International Trade Commission (USITC) in May 2014, following in the wake of its first case at the District Court for the Southern District of New York, which began in February 2014, and it won a General Exclusion Order (GEO) in the case in September 2015.