A Memjet printhead
The manufacturer was granted a preliminary injunction by the District Court of Munich over printheads, meaning HP “cannot” sell PageWide XL machines in Germany.
Wide-Format Online reported on the proceedings in Germany, which have seen District Court Munich I grant Memjet a “preliminary injunction” against HP Deutschland GmbH, a subsidiary of HP Inc in Germany. The injunction “is in effect throughout the German market”, and “bars” HP Deutschland “from offering for sale, distributing and importing for those purposes the current ink distribution assembly of the HP 841 printheads”.
These printheads are used in HP’s wide-format PageWide machines, and as a result of the injunction, the PageWide XL series of printers that feature “this assembly cannot be marketed anymore by HP Deutschland GmbH”. The proceedings found a “prima facie” case of infringement of Memjet’s EP 1 292 451 patent, specifically the German part, and the injunction has been granted “ex parte” because of “urgency”, as HP is “beginning to enter the German market with these infringing devices”.
The news site pointed out that the injunction “is subject to appeal”, and Memjet commented that it has “invested substantial resources in the research and development of its page-wide waterfall technology over the last decade”. It added that it has “protected that investment through the development of a significant patent portfolio”, including “several thousand global patents in the page-wide inkjet printing space”.
District Court I Munich
Memjet first took HP to court in August over alleged infringement of eight patents, with reference to its PageWide technology, and Kambiz Izadi, Memjet’s Vice President for Legal Affairs, told Neal McChristy recently that the patent litigation could “take a significant amount of time”. HP had filed a counterclaim in the case, alleging infringement of a number of its own patents in October, and replied to McChristy’s request for comment: “As a matter of company policy, HP does not comment on ongoing legal cases.”