The case, which centres on Agfa's defence of alleged infringements of its Intellectual Property (IP) by Xingraphics, could have a major impact on the influx of thermal plates into Europe from the Far East.

Xingraphics claimed the court had "issued a favourable set of rulings" in the lawsuit, which alleged infringement of Agfa's European Patent EP823327 by Xingraphics FIT and FIT Xtra thermal plate technology.

Xingraphics corporate vice president Safwen Hijazi said: "Today's judgment is a major step forward for our organization, our valued partners and our customers worldwide, who deserve to have access to an alternative thermal plate technology, that is of equal or higher quality than our competitors, without being threatened.

"Our lawyers have demonstrated that Agfa's negative and harmful accusations, which were largely directed at our partners, were unfounded, so this judgment will allow us to put that part of this negative campaign by Agfa to a close."

However, the legal battle, which Agfa said was a defence of its "key patent for positive thermal plates", looks set to continue after the Belgian manufacturer vowed to fight on and claimed that no definitive judgement had been reached by the court.

A spokesman for the company said: "The judgment confirms the validity of Agfa's key patent for positive thermal plates, European patent EP823327. However, the infringement by the FIT plates of Xingraphics was found to be insufficiently substantiated by the presented evidence.

"On the other hand, non-infringement was not proven by Xingraphics either, so the court could not grant Xingraphics' request for a declaration of non-infringement. Moreover, the court allowed Agfa Graphics to request additional seizures of Xingraphics plates in the future."

Agfa said it was now in the process of preparing the necessary "additional evidence of the infringement of the Agfa Graphics patent in order to obtain a decision in favor of Agfa".