Ishida has mounted a legal challenge against the exhibiting of multihead weighers that infringe its patents at the Interpack trade fair in Düsseldorf.

The company yesterday filed an injunction with the Regional Court of Düsseldorf against a number of Chinese exhibitors.

The machines concerned are multihead weighers exhibited by the Chinese companies; High Dream, Jinyi and Saimo.

These companies have been prevented from exhibiting the infringing machines at Interpack. The multihead weighers have had to be removed from the stands or covered up immediately, Ishida engineers discovered the illegal use of patented elements of Ishida multihead weighers as they walked around the various stands on the eve of the fair.

Paul Griffin, marketing director at Ishida Europe, said: “We have taken this action against the infringers to protect our technology and our ideas. In doing so, Ishida is helping to maintain quality standards in the packaging industry.”

According to the German Engineering Federation (VDMA), sales worth around €5 billion are lost to product piracy every year in mechanical engineering in Germany alone.