Danish company Container Centralen (CC) has successfully fended off an accusation over its prices from Dutch company KG van Vliet Handelsmij BV.
KG van Vliet Handelsmij BV had alleged CC fees are too high, but at a legal procedure in court at The Hague, all charges were either rejected or dismissed.
CC hires out returnable transport items, among others the acknowledged transport unit for plants, the CC Container, and has supplied KG van Vliet for a number of years.
But at the end of July, KG van Vliet filed a lawsuit against CC claiming it doesn’t sufficiently protect its system against illegal container copies of an inferior quality, and that CC has increased its fees to cover the costs for repair and maintenance of these containers.
CC chief financial officer Urban Folcker said: “The last few years, we have adjusted the price annually, corresponding to general price index increases. But the pool fee in 2009 is still more than three per cent less than it was in 1991. I think this is pretty unusual for any company.”
CC regularly updates the identification marks of all CC Containers in the company’s pool to ensure that any illegal containers that may have entered the system are detected, and “freeloaders” are avoided.
Managing director Tonny Gravesen said: “We are aware that there are companies in the market that copy our identification marks to enter our system illegally. This is why we will change the identification marks of all CC Containers again in 2010. This time, the new tag will have built-in Radio Frequency Identification, which is impossible to copy, according to our supplier. This will make it much easier to detect and reject illegal copies for all users.
“Within the past two months, we have won two court cases against offenders who infringed our intellectual property rights by copying our CC Container identification marks. These cases had been ongoing for years, but at least it is nice to know that justice is done in the end.”
The recent legal procedure with KG van Vliet, was, however, not initiated by CC. Graveson said: “We of course regret that one of our long-time customers disagrees with us on some issues. However, we are happy that this issue was settled so quickly, and that all charges were rejected or dismissed at the procedure; we are now looking forward to continuing to work together.”
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