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Today we received from our legal office the purview of the judgement of the Court of Trieste lodged on 28 June 2007 in the lawsuit filed by Mr. Alberto Fiorenzi, Fiorenzi Marine Group s.r.l., Marine Enterprise Projects s.r.l. and H.T.M. s.r.l. against Genesis International AS and Elvstrom Sobstad.
The result of the judgement is completely in favour of Alberto Fiorenzi and of the enterprises of the Holding – Fiorenzi Marine Group, the Court having:
# established that the national patent Fiorenzi (Spidertech) 1.333.365, registered with the priority of the related request of the international patent PCT (Patent Cooperation Treaty) to be in force in the countries of the EPC (European Patent Convention) and in other ones, is valid, independent, and not in any breach of the patents of Conrad (Genesis);
# established that the manufacturing and the commercial basis of the Spidertech sails are fair dealings and do not infringe the exclusive rights of the counterparts in any way;
# rejected, as they are considered unfounded, all the requests of the counterpart, even those referring to assessment of infringement and the claim for damages;
# convicted the counterpart for the reimbursement of the legal charges and definitively settled for the counterpart to pay for the CTU (i.e. Experts appointed by the Court) charges.Valencia, 03/07/2007

What has been stated above is in short the result of the lawsuit brought by Alberto Fiorenzi and the enterprises of the Holding – Fiorenzi Marine Group to react against the pressing requests from Elvestrom/Sobstad to stop the manufacturing of Spidertech.
The decision to file a lawsuit against the Danish enterprise was taken in order to bring the truth to light about a matter in the marketplace and to rule our independence from every previously registered patent. The judgement might be appealed by the participating companies but the European patent Conrad (Genesis) EP 249.427 – as well as the USA patent, from which the European one derives (which was the reason that started the lawsuit), is definitively expired in the meanwhile and therefore is no longer valid.

Here follows today’s statement by Alberto Fiorenzi, CEO of FMG:

We are obviously very satisfied with the verdict of the Court. This decision confirms again what was already determined by some of the patent
registration offices where we have lodged a petition for an industrial patentright.
By inventing the Spidertech Integrated System we have focused our attention mainly on solving the challenges to optimize the design and production
processes of the sails with a highly innovative approach.
Thanks to our twenty years of experience in the field of materials and fabrics for the production of sails, we succeeded in giving new innovative tools to sail designers and sailmakers. After only barely 3 years since the launching of our Spidertech Integrated System we have exceeded not only the expectations of the Italian Market but also the rest of the International Market.
Thanks to the contribution of the innovative design technology, we developed for our customers, the Spidertech Integrated System is the only system worldwide enabling sailmakers to completely personalize their own product and offers them complete diversification even from other Spidertech authorized designers.
Spidertech is manufactured solely and in its entirety by FMG using machinery purposely invented and created by the engineering department of FMG.
The judgement of Trieste represents a further confirmation of the great ability of FMG to innovate and also of its leading position in the global market by finally disposing of the notion of copying ideas of others with which some protagonists of the market have attempted several times to brand us.
I am very grateful towards my legal advisers Mr. Pier Luigi Costa and Mr. Paolo Creta from Bologna and also towards the very capable doctor Petraz of the Industrial Property Office GLP in Udine for the excellent aid and for the judicial result gained as well as towards all those customers who, sure of their intuitions, put their trust into our experience and technology for the last twenty years.
The evidence of that is the impressive list of victories and race results about which we can legitimately be proud.
In writing from Valencia, where FMG established some time ago a branch office supporting and supplying the America’s Cup Campaigns, I look at the future always with the same optimism and certain of the fact that our Spidertech Integrated System, the result of our years of intensive engineering research, will be esteemed by an always growing number of customers all around the world.