Leading seamless circular knitting machine builder Santoni has taken steps to protect its new SDW8 double needle bar raschel warp knitting machine through international design registration.  The SDW8 is already protected by a family of 15 patents but design registration will help stop copycat machine builders from building machines which look like Santoni machines but which are in fact, inferior in construction and performance.

Speaking in Shanghai at the recent ITMA Asia + CITME, company spokesperson Franco Sciacca told KnittingIndustry.com: “Lonati Group, the owner of Santoni was so full of admiration for the design of the SDW8 that it wanted to act to protect the design and form of the machine. When you create something of great beauty, it is natural to want to protect it.” Sciacca likened the situation to Coca Cola registering the design of its now iconic Coke bottle in the early part of the last century. Competitors could try to copy the contents but not the design of the bottle.

Santoni and other leading machine builders such as Karl Mayer, Shima Seiki, Stoll and many others have all had problems with copycat machine builders in China directly copying their machines or building machines which are dressed up so that they can be passed off as being the same as the leading manufacturer’s products. It is the latter practice which Santoni is trying to counter with design registration as well as patent protection.

The recent ITMA Asia + CITME organisers tried to stamp out copying but some Chinese machine builders still exhibited machines which were almost identical in appearance to the machines of leading builders. It most cases they were probably not infringing patents but they were blatantly and deliberately trying to pass off their machines as being of the same quality and capability as those of the leading machines builders.

The SDW8 double needle bar raschel machine was designed from scratch by Santoni engineers with hosiery machinery backgrounds. Two prototype machines were shown at the company’s in house exhibition, Santoni Days, earlier in the summer and will extend the company’s seamless influence into the field of warp knitting.

Santoni has applied for global ornamental design protection for the SDW8 which relates to protecting the aesthetics of an object. The subject matter of design registration can be designs and models that are new and have individual character. The registration can cover the lines, contours, colours, form, superficial structure and or the materials used in the product.

The duration of the design or model registration in Italy is 5 years and can be extended for one or more periods of 5 years up to a maximum of 25 years. It is possible to affect an international registration with WIPO (World Organization for the Intellectual Ownership) or a national registration in the majority of the foreign States and it is believed that Santoni may have followed one or both of these routes. From 1 April 2003, a European Community Design allows one design registration application filed with one office (OHIM - Office for the Harmonization of the Internal Market in Alicante, Spain),which has the same effects in all EU States.