The OEM announced that the patent dispute with a German toner and drum distributor has been settled.
The news was announced in a company press release and said that Brother Industries Ltd had received “substantial damage compensation” after it took out a successful infringement action on the toner and drum distributor in 2016.
Once the infringement action was filed the distributor acknowledged that it had used patented technology from Brother before the case came to court. Due to this acknowledgement in 2016 the court’s decision deemed “not only prohibit the distributor to offer, put on the market or use the toner and drum cartridges in dispute in Germany, or to import them into Germany or possess them in Germany for said purposes”.
The distributor was ordered to pay damages and was ordered to “disclose information on the origin and chain of distribution as well as on the scope of the infringement, and to recall from commercial customers and destroy the toner and drum cartridges in dispute being in its possession. Last but not least, the judgment imposed the statutory costs of a previous warning letter and of the infringement action itself on the distributor”.
The distributor complied with all of the court’s orders and Tadashi Ishiguro, Representative Director and Senior Managing Executive Officer, Brother, commented: “Brother is very pleased with this outcome. Once again, it shows that we have strong IP rights, the infringement of which does not pay. We will continue to take appropriate action against any such infringement whenever necessary.”