HP’s German subsidiary filed the suit on Monday in a Cologne district court, claiming that Pelikan’s packaging of color inkjet cartridges poses an unfair competitive violation.
In May this year HP sued Pelikan in a Dusseldorf court for violating its print cartridge and ink formulation. HP is requesting that Pelikan refrain from infringing on its patents and is seeking monetary damages.
Pelikan makes new replacement cartridges for a number of different printers. The cartridges at the center of the HP spat are the Pelikan-branded H06 and H08 color cartridges.
This isn’t the first inkjet lawsuit that Pelikan has faced. In 2005 the company lost a similar suit to Canon. Pelikan was then ordered to stop selling the Canon cartridges and destroy any outstanding stock of the product.
Nor is Pelikan the first company that HP has sued over print cartridges. In November last year the company sued InkTec for patent infringement, accusing it of infringing on the actual ink formula contained inside the cartridge. And in 2002, HP won another lawsuit against Microjet Cartridge Hut and other cartridge manufactures for selling refill kits and replacement cartridges.
HP said it discovered Pelikan’s alleged infringement as part of the testing and enforcement efforts of its Imaging and Printing Group.
Print technology providers like HP are especially sensitive of protecting their market share in cartridge sales, because that’s where they make most of their money from, rather than print peripheral sales.
