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(Adds no immediate comment from Ocado, shares)
LONDON, Oct 1 (Reuters) - Online supermarket and technology
group Ocado, which this week became the most valuable
retailer on Britain's stock market, is being sued by Norwegian
robotics company AutoStore for allegedly infringing patents.
While Ocado's retail business has only a 1.7% share of
Britain's grocery market, its state-of-the-art technology for
robotically operated warehouses has spawned partnership deals
with supermarket chains around the world, underpinning a stock
market valuation of over 20 billion pounds ($26 billion).
AutoStore said on Thursday it had filed patent infringement
lawsuits in the United States and the United Kingdom. AutoStore
said Ocado has been its customer since 2012.
AutoStore argues that its storage system and robots are the
foundation on which the "Ocado Smart Platform" (OSP) technology
was built and on which Ocado’s business today is based, and
seeks financial damages.
"Our ownership of the technology at the heart of Ocado’s
warehousing system is clear," said AutoStore CEO and President
Karl Johan Lier in a statement.
"We will not tolerate Ocado’s continued infringement of our
intellectual property rights in its effort to boost its growth
and attempt to transform itself into a global technology
company," he added.
AutoStore, founded in 1996, is also seeking to bar Ocado and
its partners from making and selling the products involved, and
from importing them into the United States.
Ocado declined to give comment immediately.
Its shares were down 7% at 1113 GMT.
On Tuesday Ocado overtook Tesco as Britain's most
valuable retailer by market capitalization.
Ocado, founded in 2000 by three former Goldman Sachs
bankers, including CEO Tim Steiner, struggled for years to make
a profit but has been transformed by partnership deals with
supermarket groups including Kroger in the United States,
Marks & Spencer and Morrisons in Britain, Casino
in France and Aeon in Japan.
Ocado's deal with Kroger, inked in 2018, will see at least
20 automated warehouses built in the United States, with the
first due to open in early 2021. The deal was seen as key in
Kroger taking on Amazon.
($1 = 0.7784 pounds)
(Reporting by Vanessa O'Connell and James Davey; editing by
Keith Weir and Susan Fenton)
