SCA Tissue France SAS v. Vailli, District Court The Hague, 27 December 2017, Case No. ECLI:NL:RBDHA:2017:15395
SCA holds EP 1 799 083 B1 related to a “Toilet paper dispenser housing a roll, toilet paper roll and dispenser’. SCA states that the Vailli K5 dispensers filled with paper that SCA employees discovered at a fair directly and indirectly infringe its patent.
The Court first disagrees with Vialli’s invalidity arguments. As to Vialli’s statement that it does not sell toilet paper, but only a dispenser the Court rules that also the dispenser is an essential part of the invention and that thus selling these dispensers indirectly infringes SCA’s patent. As to direct infringement the Court rules that SCA lacks sufficient interest in an injunction as the only relevant act is having a limited number of dispensers available at a fair. In as far as having these dispensers available could be seen as an offering of the dispensers, this already falls under the injunction based on indirect infringement.
A copy of the decision can be read here.