By Editor Morten B. Reitoft

For years, I’ve followed a small Danish PSP, OnPrint, on Facebook, not because I knew them in detail or because they, as a printing company, were anything special as such, but because the owner, Ib Plambech Hansen, is a very creative man. Being creative doesn’t always mean that you can scale your idea to a global or even national business. Still, when you get ideas that can eventually be patented, it becomes a question of protecting the innovation and securing your product, so at least you either get a license for others to use the idea or you can protect your sales for a period.

Most of us will think twice about ‘stealing’ an idea if an idea is already patent pending.

A few weeks before our NON-EVENT 2023, OnPrint showed a great solution: an alternative to a roll-up made entirely of cardboard. After visiting OnPrint, we ordered one for each of our 100 guests to showcase the Fold-Up to our international audience.

Imagine coming into our conference and there are 100 Fold-Ups with the face of each attendee. It was a unique experience, and everybody was blown away. The effect was fantastic, and I don’t know if it enhanced the experience that all of these Fold-Ups were made of cardboard or if the effect would have been the same if on Roll-Up. Still, the effect was that almost all attendees brought their Fold-Up home, and later, these were shown from homes, offices, and other places on Social Media channels - as something rather special.

When I later came to an Open House with Koenig & Bauer in Radebeul, several Fold-Ups, produced by OnPrint, were delivered and became once more an aha experience for the visitors who looked on these Fold-Ups with great professional interest.

Ib Plambech Hansen and his son Jannik Hansen formed a company called GreenForm and started promoting the Fold-Up and other products that Ib Hansen developed. To increase the volume of the products, GreenForm initiated a dealer program and started calling fellow Danish printing companies to see whether there was interest, and there was. Several companies and brand owners started buying GreenForm products, which could have been the end or the beginning of a success.

A small company spends time innovating a new product. GreenFrom applies for a patent to protect the innovation, but what now happens potentially kills innovation in our industry. A large online printing company offered a dealership to decide that they could either do it better, smarter, or more profitable themselves. So, instead of accepting the dealership, they stole the idea and started promoting this under another name.

Can OnPrint sue the larger company? It depends on whether a patent will be granted. Secondly, Ib Hansen also tells me it all comes down to karma. This tells a lot about the large company that doesn’t care much about ideas, innovation, etc.

If a larger company uses other people’s ideas without respect for the origin, they may have the size and organization to produce the product cheaper. Still, in recent years, big supermarkets have lost case after case on copying designs by recognized artists, so maybe this will end the same way. But the long-term consequence could be less innovation because if the big ones without almost any consequences can steal from the smaller ones - who would like to work for free?