Leads patent dispute with Barberán

A patent is an industrial property right for an invention granted by a sovereign body. The owner of the patent is entitled to prohibit others from using the invention. Unfortunately, from the point of view of Hymmen GmbH from Bielefeld, there have recently been patent infringements by competitors in the field of digital printing. As a result, the Westphalian company saw itself forced to file a lawsuit. The following information was provided today by Dr. René Pankoke, managing partner and CEO of Hymmen:

"Already since 2007 Hymmen has been active in research and development in the field of industrial digital printing. Already at that time we were of the opinion that among others the production of digitally printed laminate flooring as well as other surfaces would become more and more popular in the future. The expected market development actually started. With our own development department and our specialists, we constructed digital printing systems, which we then presented at the 'Ligna' 2009.

Currently, we are assuming a worldwide production of printed surfaces on Hymmen 'Jupiter' digital printing systems of well over 100 million square meters per year. Digital printing will be the future of the market worldwide.

In the last 13 years Hymmen has invested a lot of effort in research and development for its customers, has developed several new processes and has applied for numerous industrial property rights to protect its intellectual property. In the area of digitally printed surfaces alone, including the digital structuring of surfaces, Hymmen currently has a large number of national and international applications for industrial property rights, a large number of which have already been granted after corresponding examination by the responsible authorities.

For us as a supplier of industrial digital printing systems, it is important that our machine and system customers as well as our partners from the paint manufacturer sector can safely operate their systems or sell their paint materials. We are at your side with our experience and competence to achieve this.

For this reason, our experts regularly monitor our competitors and other players in the market for decorative and digitally printed surfaces. Where we consider it essential, we will also defend our intellectual property significantly. For your information we would therefore like to inform you about the following current decision from Hymmen: On April 14, 2020 Hymmen GmbH filed a patent infringement suit against Barberán S.A. at the Regional Court Düsseldorf (file no. 4b O 26/20). This concerns the infringement of two industrial property rights of Hymmen GmbH:

The first patent is the German part of the European patent 'EP 3 109 056'. The German file number is DE 50 2016 000 571.0. This patent is granted and in force. An opposition procedure against the patent is currently in progress, but Hymmen GmbH is fully convinced that the patent will be maintained in the result.

The patent protection relates to a process for producing a structure on a surface of a flat workpiece and a device for producing this structure. The offer of devices of the series 'Jetmaster' of Barberán S.A., which - especially under the designation 'Jetmaster TXT' or 'Jetmaster TRT' - serve to apply the patented structure coating as so-called 'True Texture' property, is attacked.

The second patent at issue is the German part of the European patent EP 2 313 281. The German file number is DE 50 2010 001 024.6. This patent has also been granted. After conclusion of an opposition procedure, the European Patent Office maintained the patent of action with minor amendments by decision of 14.12.2014. The appeal directed against this decision was withdrawn by the opponent. The opposition proceedings in this case have thus been finally and conclusively concluded. This patent is asserted against Barberán S.A. in the version confirmed by the opposition division.

The patent protection concerns a process for the decorative coating of flat workpieces. Barberán S.A. devices are attacked, for example devices from the series 'Jetmaster 1260' or 'Jetmaster 1890 single pass'.

An extension of the infringement action to further industrial property rights of Hymmen GmbH is basically possible.

Unfortunately, due to the activities of Barberán S.A. since last year 2019, we see ourselves forced to take this step in order to protect the interests of Hymmen GmbH as well as those of our customers and our partners on the side of the paint manufacturers.

As far as this will be necessary in the future, we will file further patent infringement suits against other market participants if necessary".