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Judge Upholds Canon’s $4.4 Million Toner-Infringement Award

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Law360 reports that this week, a Georgia federal judge let stand a $4.4 million verdict against third-party toner-cartridge maker Color Imaging Inc. and plastic manufacturer General Plastic Industrial, both accused by Canon Inc. of Tokyo, Japan, of violating its toner-bottle patent. The judge stated that a jury’s patent-infringement verdict handed down in June 2017, and the $4.4 million in damages it subsequently awarded Canon “were reasonably supported by the evidence.”

The judge – U.S. District Judge Amy Totenberg – pointed out that Canon presented evidence that the companies continued to sell their toner bottles after learning of both Canon’s patent and Canon’s claim that the bottles were infringing it.

Back in June 2017, a federal jury awarded Canon a $4.5 million award after finding that the two companies “willfully infringed” upon a Canon patent (U.S. Patent Number 7,467,012) involving Canon toner bottles (see story here).

The jury handed out the verdict on Monday, June 19th, at the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Georgia, Atlanta Division. It ordered General Plastic to pay Canon $3.7 million, and Color Imaging, to pay Canon $730,000.

Canon had sued in 2011, accusing the companies of making and selling replacement toner bottles for use with Canon imageRunner copier/MFPs. General Plastic, which owns stock in Color Imaging, supplied the empty bottles that Color Imaging then filled, packaged, and warehoused.

Color Imaging and General Plastic appealed the decision.

This week,Judge Totenberg however wrote in her decision: “With or without [the expert’s] testimony, the jury had sufficient evidence to find that the Type B bottles met all the elements of the asserted claims, based on the court’s construction of the claim language as well as the jury’s own examination of the Type B bottles and how they worked in the Canon copiers.”

The two companies had also requested tossing the jury’s verdict or convening a new trial because, they said, the jury’s damage award was excessive and exceeded their current revenues.

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