Our client filed a lawsuit with the Moscow City Arbitration Court on December 26, 2017 requesting that the defendants stop the infringement of the patent rights to the invention and pay monetary compensation.
The defendants: the largest supplier of consumables, components and spare parts for the maintenance of printing and computer equipment on the Russian market, and his largest retailer, were infringing the plaintiff's patent rights by importing and distributing certain models of cartridges, where Plaintiff's invention was illegally used.
The court ordered in-court technical examination, which witnessed the infringement.
In order to reduce the amount of compensation, the defendants raised the following argument. According to defendants' statements, a model number of the cartridge indicates only the compatible printer models, and does not obligatorily indicates that technical implementation of cartridges under such a model number is one and the same. Defendants stated, that they were not controlling, what exact devices were put into the packagings under certain model numbers and, therefore, what exact cartridges were in fact introduced into the Russian market, that is why it was impossible to establish the scale of the infringement. Basing on that, the defendants pleaded for payment of compensation only for 16 cartridge items, factually analyzed during the court examination.
The court dismissed said arguments of the defendants and awarded the compensation much greater of the amount, which the defendants insisted on. To strengthen the position, the plaintiff provided the confirmations of purchases all around Russia (from Moscow to Vladivostok), including the purchase certified by a notary. At the same time, a piece of evidence provided by the defendants was excluded from the case materials upon the plaintiff's statement on falsification of evidence.
As a result of consideration of the case, the court satisfied the claims of the plaintiff, forcing both defendants to stop offering for sale, sale, and, otherwise, introducing cartridges into civil circulation, in which the invention is used. One of the defendants was forced to publish the resolutive part of the judgement in the official Rospatent bulletin. The court also awarded monetary compensation to be paid to the plaintiff (for more information please follow the link). «Canon» Inc. was represented by Aleksey Zalesov, Irina Ozolina and Maria Makhlina, partners of «A.Zalesov & Partners» Patent & Law Firm.