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HP wins German legal battle over ink

Colin Barker ZDNet.co.uk

Published: 01 Sep 2008 14:12 BST

A German regional court has ruled in favour of HP in its action against Pelikan Hardcopy Deutschland, saying the ink and stationary supplier had violated the German law on unfair competition.

The Cologne Regional Court has ordered Pelikan to "cease labelling certain newly manufactured inkjet print cartridges as 'remanufactured'", according to a statement from HP on Thursday.

The US company said it had discovered that Pelikan marketed and sold new print cartridges in packaging that claimed the new cartridges were remanufactured products from HP.

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HPsaid it initiated the unfair competition action against Pelikan last summer after Pelikan "refused HP's request to voluntarily give an undertaking to cease its misleading advertising".

The cartridges at the heart of the action were sold under the designations H06 and H08 and were the subject of a patent-infringement proceeding brought by HP against Pelikan in Germany last year. Back in August 2007, a court in Germany ordered Pelikan to stop importing and distributing these cartridges following what HP called Pelikan's "admission of patent infringement". The legal dispute then continued with the unfair competition case.

Pelikan has been a supplier of ink and printing products in Germany for more than 150 years. The company sells a wide range of paper products as well as ink cartridges. It also sells a wide range of cartridges that can be re-filled, from companies such as Canon and Epson as well as HP.