Thursday, January 06, 2022
Trouble about the patent
The argument about the assault rifle continues
The two German arms manufacturers Heckler & Koch and Haenel are currently engaged in legal battles on various fronts. It’s about patent offenders and, in a larger context, about a huge order from the Bundeswehr. In a point of dispute, it now goes to the next instance.
A patent dispute between the weapons companies Heckler & Koch and Haenel is entering the next round. “We have appealed,” said Haenel’s CFO Sven Lahl in Suhl. He did not provide any further information. In November, the gunsmith suffered a setback at the Düsseldorf regional court, and from the court’s point of view, Haenel infringed a HK patent on an assault rifle model. The court considered claims to recall and destruction to be justified. Now the Düsseldorf Higher Regional Court has to take a close look at the facts. An OLG spokeswoman confirmed the appeal process. There are no dates for this yet.
The Düsseldorf patent dispute is a side line in the permanent clinch between the armories from the Black Forest and the Thuringian Forest. Both companies are determined to have a major federal order for 120,000 assault rifles. It looks good for Heckler & Koch, but Haenel pulls out all the legal registers and still wants to get the contract. In March, the Düsseldorf Higher Regional Court will also decide in a separate procedure whether Haenel can re-enter the race for the major order.
The major Bundeswehr order involves a fully automatic rifle, i.e. with a continuous fire function. The patent dispute, in turn, in which Haenel has now appealed, is about a semi-automatic rifle model used by the Saxony police and the Bremen police, for example.
The patent at issue concerns, among other things, tiny openings in the rifle that are designed to allow water to drain off quickly and to be ready to fire when soldiers wade through a river or land on the seashore – this is known as “over the beach”. In a further strand of the legal dispute, Haenel wants to have said patent declared null and void before the Munich Federal Patent Court. If the patent were deleted, there could not have been any patent infringement, according to the logic of the Thuringian armory. When the Munich court will decide on this is still open – this could be this year or not until 2023.