Starlinger has won a legal battle against Chinese machinery manufacturers for patent infringement.
The Austria-based plastics machinery producer said in statement it settled the lawsuit out-of-court during ‘lengthy’ legal procedures before both a civil court and a court specialised in intellectual property in China.
The dispute pertained to machines of the ad*starKON sack conversion line for producing woven plastic sacks marketed under the brand name AD*STAR.
Starlinger said ‘the machine manufacturers in question confirmed the patent infringements and immediately ceased production and sales of the copied machines’. Asked by Sustainable Plastics about the identity of the manufacturers, Starlinger said it cannot disclose that information for legal reasons.
“Only the best are copied, as the saying goes,” said Harald Neumüller, CSO of Starlinger. “However, this is little consolation if it has economic consequences for innovative machine manufacturers like us. Starlinger is strong in research and development. This ensures our technological leadership. Due to plagiarism, novel technologies have to be brought to market faster and faster in order to maintain a technological lead. Patents protect our developments and enable us to sell innovative machines over a period of time. It is therefore a great and important success that we were able to enforce our claims and the machine manufacturers had to stop producing and selling the copied machines. Intellectual property rights are to be respected.”
Starlinger added that the lawsuit for patent infringement also applies to packaging producers that used the copied machines to manufacturer copied AD*STAR plastic sacks. It said the polypropylene bags produced on its machines are particularly popular in Asia for the cement and construction industries, as well as for other dry bulk goods such as rice, flour, or chemical granulates.
“We see that our legal action against copyists and users of copied technologies in China, but also in other countries, is showing effect, and we expect people will refrain from misappropriating intellectual property in future,” Neumüller added. “Through this, we are not only protecting ourselves from plagiarism, but consequently also our customers and their markets where they sell high-quality products manufactured on our machines.”
The announcement comes as European plastics machinery manufacturers are increasingly struggling to compete with Chinese machinery on price.
Asia has also been filling more patents relating to plastic packaging and recycling than Europe. A report by UK-based GovGrant shows that more than 65% of all plastic patents have been developed in Asia over the last two decades, with China and Japan leading the charge.
Up to 2021, the accumulative volume of patent fillings in China was 9,810, or 41,57% of the total, with Japan following with 5,950 patents (25.21%). The U.S. takes third place with 2,250 patents (9.53%), followed by Germany with 2,040 (8.64%), and South Korea with 1,660 patents (7,03%). The remaining countries represented are France (609 patents), the United Kingdom (463), Italy (348), Taiwan (240), and Austria (227). This means that 67,8% of all plastic recycling and packaging innovation is concentrated in Asia.