Unilin recently filed several patent infringement cases in the district court of California, against multiple companies and individuals that are active in the importation and distribution of unlicensed glueless flooring planks that infringe Unilin’s patents.

In 2007, the International Trade Commission (ITC) in the U.S. issued a general exclusion order against flooring planks that infringe Unilin’s patented glueless technology. Unilin however noticed that certain importers succeeded in bypassing US Customs efforts to stop the patent infringing products at the US border and therefore decided to take further legal action. “The ITC’s General Exclusion Order of 2007 caused a tremendous drop in the importation of infringing flooring products into the U.S.”, states Bart Van der Stockt, managing director of Unilin’s IP business unit. “Unilin however will continue to protect its licensees and their customers by taking further actions against the companies that illegally import products using our patented technology.”

Some years ago, Unilin and Välinge rolled out the L2C holographic label program to support their Chinese licensees. The L2C program requires licensees to attach a unique holographic label to each box of licensed product.  The L2C label allows companies to easily identify unlicensed products from those licensed for importation.

More information on the L2C label program can be found on www.L2Clabels.com.