How a fresh perspective helped Jual Group succeed in a decades long patent case

16 April 2026

The Client

Jual Group A/S consists of four merged operating companies working together, each of which has traditionally focused on a different area of roofing and facades: JUAL A/S, Perform A/S, Bygcheck A/S and Fixnordic A/S.

Originally started in the 1960s by plumber Svend Jørgensen, who used to produce aluminium profiles on hand-operated bending machines, Jual Group has grown to become one of Denmark’s leading suppliers of roofing and facade products to the construction industry. They now supply everything from roofing felt and ventilation to private homes in Scandinavia to solar panels and control systems on warehouses in Asia.

The group has a history of innovation and the development or more efficient and safer working environments, often combining traditional roofing elements with modern materials. Operating with sustainability at their core, many of their products include a detailed overview of their environmental impact, from raw material to production and disposal. Traditional Danish values continue to drive much of their thinking as they have grown throughout the years.

The Background

JUAL A/S, and later Perform A/S, were accused of infringing against a competitor’s patent for a roofing solution over two decades ago. The accusation had the potential to limit the future of the company as they would have no longer been able to produce and supply their own materials, underpinning some of their most important product lines. Multiple disputes with the competitor have followed, over many years, and now that all cases have been successfully concluded we can finally talk about the long journey that it took to get here.

Following years of back & forth between the parties, Jual reached out to Zacco in 2018 to see if we could help to break the existing deadlock. We pursued an offensive strategy, filing a formal court action to have non-infringement confirmed through a single hearing at the court of first instance in 2020. Although the counterparty lost, they appealed and requested a re-evaluation of the circumstances and technical questions. This required additional insight from an independent technical expert, and further tests of our client’s materials in terms of how they would act when applied in specific settings. The test results and the expert’s consideration and conclusions then served as additional evidence, adding to the conclusion of the first court when the case returned to trial on appeal.

The final case and the successful result

Effectively, the counterparty argued that use of Jual’s products in particular circumstances, could constitute an infringement of their patent, depending on how the material acts. The counterparty suggested that the expert opinion should change the court’s interpretation of the facts by challenging inherent virtues of any plastic material, and whether it would also classify as elastic.

Their patent referred to part of a roofing element being elastic, and our client’s product was plastic, but ‘slightly elastic’ when subject to force during fitting. This resulted in much time spent exploring and defining the behaviour of our client’s product to identify whether it was predominantly plastic or elastic. Throughout the final case, it was confirmed that the product was predominantly plastic. This assessment was strengthened by our counterargument that the material was also general purpose, and therefore had many technical uses, unlike the counterparty’s patent which covered only a specific solution. Our client had not instructed specific use within the scope of the patent and had limited influence over how the product is actually used by the customer. Zacco argued successfully that this should therefore not lead to patent infringement.

Zacco took over a long running dispute previously handled by other prominent firms and has been able to achieve success where others have failed. Despite the dispute running almost 25 years now (and the infringed patent expiring more than four years ago), we have now won at both the court of first instance and subsequent appeals, and the final outcome can no longer be appealed.

The case had been through multiple representatives, many of whom had tried different routes that had ultimately failed to achieve a positive outcome. Zacco’s success was ultimately the result of the close collaboration between our in-house patent and legal teams. Both teams cooperate, providing separate professional insights and a fresh perspective into what would likely work in court, based on comprehensive analysis of plausible strategy and previous approaches. The interplay between close colleagues, able to chat informally and share ideas, was arguably what changed the angle around the case and built the foundation for success by devising a new method for addressing the issue and moving the case forward. Few firms in Europe can leverage this solid application of combined legal and patent expertise, and that’s what sets Zacco results apart.

The Feedback

Anders Kjær Jørgensen, CEO of Jual Group A/S, shared the following: “Having spent so many years arguing over technical details and defending our growing market position, we are really pleased that this case has finally come to an end. We appreciate the collaboration we’ve had with Zacco over the years, both in bringing the infringement case to a successful conclusion and in helping us to strengthen and enforce our IP portfolio globally.”