Kärcher Blog International

Today was the first day of hearings at the Stuttgart District Court in the legal dispute between Kärcher and Tennant. Tennant has until March 13 to submit a further opinion to the Chamber for Commercial Affairs, and Kärcher has until April 3 to submit a response. The Court is due to issue its ruling on April 27.

“In the oral proceedings we reiterated our view of the matter clearly and precisely, and it was evident that the Court had familiarised itself very well with the facts of the case. So we look forward in confidence to the pronouncement of judgment at the end of April,” said Markus Asch, Managing Director Professional Products and Deputy Chairman of the Alfred Kärcher GmbH & Co. KG management.

Tennant has withdrawn in Germany a wrongly translated Press release in which it claimed incorrectly that an agency responsible for dealing with anti-competitive advertising in the UK– Oxfordshire County Council’s Trading Standards Service – considered scientific proof to have been provided of the efficacy of ec-H2O technology.

In fact, the agency had merely stated that it was not pursuing the complaint further because its expertise was mainly legal and it did not have detailed knowledge about every product that was available on the market. The Trading Standards Service merely observed that Tennant had submitted evidence in support of its dubious advertising claims, but that it – the TSS – was unable to check the accuracy of the evidence. Accordingly, Tennant continues to have failed to provide scientific proof of the efficacy of the so-called ec-H2O technology.

Tennant GmbH & Co. KG has applied to the Regional Court in Stuttgart for a further extension of the deadline for the statement of defence to 7 December 2011. The request was granted.

The reason given by Tennant for this request for an extension of the deadline is that expert opinion was currently being compiled by the Fraunhofer Institute for Interfacial Engineering and Biotechnology (IGB). The subject under examination was the effectiveness of the ec-H2O technology.

Till now, Tennant had publicly maintained that the effectiveness of the so-called ec-H2O technology had already some time ago been substantiated by several studies.