The Hymmen company recently announced that one of the patents from the Hymmen patent portfolio, which deals with digital structure printing, was upheld by the decision of the Opposition Division of the European Patent Office (EPO) in Munich on 10 March 2021.

In this case, the EPO had to decide on the oppositions filed by Barbéran, Cefla and Giorgio Macor against one of Hymmen’s patents – in this case the patent “DLE Digital Lacquer Embossing” with patent number EP 3 109 056. This patent has been in force since 14 February 2018. The subject matter of the patent includes a method for producing a structure on a surface of a flat workpiece and an apparatus for carrying out this method.

In the decision, the EPO Opposition Division upheld the above-mentioned Hymmen patent with slightly amended text stating that the claimed process must be a structure that is synchronous with the underlying decor. As the vast majority of digital decors and digital structure prints produced to date are synchronous, this is judged by Hymmen to be a minor change in the patent claims and will not diminish the importance of this patent in the field of digital structure printing.

“We are very pleased that the opposition division of the EPO essentially followed our arguments regarding novelty, inventive step and applicability of the main patent claims and upheld the patent with the above details. This is particularly important for Hymmen, as the German part of the above-mentioned DLE patent EP 3 109 056 is one of the two current patents on the basis of which Hymmen is pursuing patent infringement claims against Barberán before the Düsseldorf Regional Court, which were filed on 14 April 2020 (Düsseldorf Regional Court, file number 4b O 26/20),” it says from Bielefeld (see mf.com of 19 June 2020). The patent infringement proceedings are to continue as planned. “It is important to us to protect our know-how and that of our business partners with our Hymmen patent portfolio,” affirms the Hymmen management.