In order to protect the lawful interest of intellectual property rights own-ers during the exhibition, the sponsors of ITMA ASIA 2018 installed an on-site intellectual property rights office (“IPR Office”), consisting of the spon-sors, external IPR administrative authority and IPR practitioners.

Complaints against violation of intellectual property rights

On the first day of the fair, Jakob Müller found that the machines of the three companies showed clear violation of COMEZ’s intellectual property rights without Jakob Müller’s or COMEZ’s permission. The patentee at once filed a complaint to the IPR Office against these companies, to prohibit the exhibition of the infringing systems.

The subsidiary corporation of Switzerland based Jakob Müller AG, Comez International s.r.l has at the on-site IPR Office successfully applied for interim injunctions to stop design patent infringements against Chinese manufacturers DKY Machinery Co., Ltd, Huibang Machine (Yingkou) Co., Ltd and Dah Heer Industrial Co., Ltd.

Action initiated against perpetrators

The IPR Office served the complaint materials to three companies in the morning of second day and set a time limit of 24 hours for a counterstate-ment to the three infringers. One of them, Dah Heer, removed the infringing system actively, and the others, DKY and Huibang, submitted a counter-statement. After the IPR Office assessed these statements and evaluated the possibility of the infringements, the IPR Office required them to remove the systems concerned in the patent on 17th October 2018. The systems con-cerned were removed by DKY and Huibang and not exhibited any more until the end of the fair.

Bernhard Engesser emphasised that Jakob Müller AG will take a high priority against further patent infringements.