At FESPA 2007, Thieme GmbH & Co. KG used a court injunction to force a Chinese exhibitor to remove a copy of a Thieme squeegee mechanism from its stand. The Chinese machine manufacturer had already co…
At FESPA 2007, Thieme GmbH & Co. KG used a court injunction to force a Chinese exhibitor to remove a copy of a Thieme squeegee mechanism from its stand. The Chinese machine manufacturer had already come to the attention of Thieme experts at the trade fair two years ago because of its literature distribution; in which parts had been copied from Thieme brochures. Thieme had informed the FESPA trade fair management at the time of their suspicion of product piracy. This suspicion was then confirmed at the 2007 trade fair: the Chinese company exhibited a screen printing machine with an unlicensed replica of a Thieme squeegee mechanism. On the first day of the trade fair, Thieme personnel requested the patent infringed product to be dismantled. After a failure to respond to this request, the Regional Court (Landgericht) of Berlin was contacted for an injunction which was then enforced the next day on the Chinese stand. The squeegee mechanism was removed and brought to the pound of the Regional Court of Berlin for destruction. As the Chinese exhibitor had initially refused to pay the court costs incurred, bailiff“s stamps were attached to two of his machines on the next day of the fair. The stamps were only removed when the court costs were paid. Managing director Frank Thieme plans to continue his campaign against product pirates: “Although patent infringements by competitors are always a confirmation of the fact that we have the best technical solutions, we cannot and will not tolerate such infringements. We invest a lot in research and development in order to be able to offer our customers these superior technical concepts.” Thieme said the action at FESPA was a logical consequence of this policy, particularly as the situation was quite clear, as was confirmed by the injunction granted immediately by the Regional Court of Berlin. Thieme did express some criticism, however, of the “less than satisfactory support” from the trade fair organization. Thieme would have expected a more uncompromising approach, particularly as the trade fair organizers had already been informed of the suspicion of patent infringement. As it is not always as simple as in this case to remove such fake products from circulation, Frank Thieme advises his customers always to opt for the original over the copy. “Even apart from the legal complications associated with the use of an unlicensed replica, a copy is always just a copy and rarely has the same quality as the original”.