bb converses with Martin Rauscher, the CEO of Zuani Deutschland GmbH
Mr. Rauscher, we have heard about the “corner joint for window and/or door frames”, aka the Prüller patent. Could you tell us something more?
In 2012 Mr. Georg Prüller and Mr. Richard Prüller made a patent application with the name indicated above. Zuani Deutschland GmbH played a key role in its development and developed the implementation of the tools solution. We had already reached an agreement regarding the pre-purchase option at the start of its launch on the market. We placed the pre-option in September 2019, and now Zuani Deutschland GmbH is the legal owner of the patent.
What was the decisive factor in obtaining the purchase option at the moment?
A patent opposition had been brought by some competitors and corresponding responses by the previous patent owners. At the hearing before the litigation section of the German patents and trademarks office in Munich in May of this year, the opposition was rejected and the patent was confirmed in first instance. That was the right moment for us.
What are your reasons?
First of all, our concern was and still is to guarantee legal safety for our clients. We were capable of guaranteeing this at all times. We set a price for the use of the patent for our clients in the tool’s purchase price. Therefore, we believe that it is mandatory that our clients apply the patent. We are aware that the system provider deliberately omitted the issue with many users. Zuani Germany instead always communicated it clearly.
What does it look like, in actual practice?
All users of a production process with which a connection to the corner of the frame is made in compliance with the patent’s specifications – with the exclusion of Zuani clients – are currently in a state of patent infringement – retrospectively from the day in which the patent was granted in 2015. We are also quite sure that the appeal proceedings under way before the Federal Patent Court will be ruled in our favour. Similar patent procedures under way in the metalworking industry are well known.
