A US court has dismissed a set of patent cases against QI Press Controls, but litigant QuadTech says there is more to come.
While the Federal District Court in Philadelphia ‘fully and finally dismissed’ all QuadTech’s pending cases against it related to the ’577 patent, QuadTech says it still plans to act on another patent.
QI said it was “pleased with the dismissals”. Quad/Tech had claimed that QI’s Markless Registration System and Intelligent Density System infringed Quad/Tech’s ’577 patent, which describes a method to measure and correct registration from the printed image and without using well-known registration marks. In one of the cases, Quad/Tech alleged that QI’s Markless Registration System did not even exist and that the company had deceived the industry by advertising a ‘phantom’ product.
QI demonstrated the Markless Registration System on a printing press in Europe, and about a week later, Quad/Tech informed the court that it would voluntarily dismiss the claim.
Later this month, QuadTech said two cases had been dismissed at its request, but another – concerning QI’s Intelligent Density System (IDS) was not yet resolved. The case was put on hold while QI asked the US Patent and Trademark Office to declare it invalid, but QuadTech says the application was rejected and when the reexamination process has ended, it will resume the remaining litigation.
QuadTech president Karl Fritchen says “with so little at stake any longer”, it made no economic sense to keep litigating and doing so would take away QI’s right to argue that QuadTech's infringement and false advertising claims were incorrect.
QI chairman Menno Jansen's view is that QuadTech dropped the case because QI showed a working mark-less colour register control system, "not a phantom product as they had claimed".
"As long as our customers can see the difference between the two companies I feel fine," he says.