 The defendants are:
Seine Image International Co, Ltd;
Ninestar Image Co, Ltd;
Ziprint Image Corp;
Nano Pacific Corp;
Ninestar Technology Co, Ltd;
Town Sky, Inc; ACM Technologies, Inc;
LD Products, Inc;
Printer Essentials.com, Inc;
XSE Group, Inc;
Copy Technologies, Inc;
Red Powers, Inc;
Direct Billing International, Inc;
Compu-Imaging, Inc;
EIS Office Solutions, Inc;
123 Refills, Inc;
Ninestar Image International, Ltd;
Ninestar Technology Co, Ltd;
Ninestar Management Co Ltd;
Zhuhai Seine Technology Co, Ltd.
According to Bloomberg, Canon lodged a complaint with the US International Trade Commission (USITC) in Washington to block imports of the cartridges and filed a companion civil lawsuit in federal court in New York.
The article added: ¡°The patents relate to the rotating drums inside the cartridges and how they connect to the printer. Laser beams scan across the drum in a pattern matching the image to be printed and powdery toner sticks to the device before being deposited on the paper, according to the complaint.¡±
Fitzpatrick, Cella, Harper and Scinto, which has been named the 2010 ¡°Best US IP [intellectual property] Law Firm¡± by International Legal Alliance Summit and Awards, is representing Canon.
A Ninestar spokesperson said: ¡°Lately, Ninestar Image International Ltd was informed that Canon Inc filed 337 investigation claims through the US International Trade Commission (ITC) over a series of toner cartridge, which had been stopped for sale long time ago to the United States market.
¡°Canon Inc is the pioneer of the global imaging technology and an admirable leading company in the industry. Ninestar always honor Canon¡¯s patents on imaging output technologies. Ninestar is now amply analyzing the patents involved and the contents of the claim.¡±
This is not the first time that Ninestar has been caught up in a patent infringement lawsuit with Canon. In December last year, Ninestar announced that it had settled a lawsuit over LED-equipped inkjet cartridges.
Also last year, Ninestar was fined $11 million by the US ITC. It issued civil penalties in the complaint filed by Epson on 23 March 2006 after finding violations of cease and desist orders and a consent order issues in the original investigation.
Canon had not issued comments on the case at the time of publication. |