Tech-ni-Fold Declares 'No Hard Feelings' in a Letter Following Rosback Patent Battle

LUTTERWORTH, England—December 7, 2015—In his letter below, Graham Harris, Tech-ni-Fold's managing director, responds to the ruling of a patent infringement lawsuit filed by Rosback Company. 

Please find the letter below: 

We were disappointed and bewildered at the outcome of the case as we were confident we would win. It was four or five weeks ago now, so we have had time to come to terms with what the judge decided.

Personally, I feel that the judge who made the ruling didn't look at our arguments in the context of the application written in our patent and that was really disappointing. My lawyers and I felt strongly that we should have prevailed, but that is how things happen sometimes. There are some things I cannot divulge right now for legal reasons; however, I do feel compelled to make public some of my experiences when the time is right.

Fortunately, the patent we were defending is 16 years old and accounts for only one percent of our business, and I knew that my decision to go ahead with the lawsuit came with the risk that we might pay out more money than we would get from selling the products that falls under it. However, we had 'an obligation to take action' against Rosback, when we saw their design—after all we still pay our annual fees to protect our early IP and I have an obligation to customers who still have our first phase devices from as far back as 12 to 16 years ago.

Our company holds another 70 patents relating to rotary creasing that solve problems in areas such as digital print, photo-book creation, and web offset processing and we are soon to launch our latest Tri-Creaser products that include new patented features that also eliminate cracking on the inside of some recycled and sensitively printed digital stocks, a problem that all creasing machine manufacturers are encountering.

Even though I felt disappointed with the ruling the technology we have in the market now is something we are focusing on.

There are no hard feelings towards Rosback or their lawyers. They’ve won the case, and we have got to put a lid on what has happened. Quite simply, what worked with our first phase technology doesn't hold up in an ever changing print on paper environment. We will continue to raise the bar in creasing and finishing excellence.

—Graham Harris, managing director, Tech-ni-Fold 

Source: Tech-ni-Fold.