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* AutoStore files lawsuits against Ocado in U.S., UK
* Seeks to prevent Ocado selling technology
* Also wants damages from Ocado
* Ocado says not aware of any infringement
* Ocado shares down 5%
(Adds Ocado response, shares)
By James Davey and Vanessa O'Connell
LONDON/NEW YORK, Oct 1 (Reuters) - British online
supermarket group Ocado was hit with a lawsuit by
robotics company AutoStore on Thursday for allegedly infringing
patents, prompting it to retaliate that it would investigate
whether the Norwegian firm infringed Ocado patents.
Ocado - which this week became the most valuable retailer on
Britain's stock market - has only a 1.7% share of Britain's
grocery market. However, 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 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, whose shares have more than doubled so far in 2020 as
the company benefited from a boom in online grocery shopping
during the pandemic, were down 5% at 1349 GMT. It said
AutoStore's statement was the first it had heard of the new
claim.
"We are not aware of any infringement of any valid AutoStore
rights and of course we will investigate any claims once we
receive further details," it said.
But Ocado also turned the tables on AutoStore. The UK
company said it had its own patents protecting the use of its
systems and would investigate whether AutoStore has, or intends
to infringe those.
"We will always vigorously protect our intellectual
property," it said.
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 in New York and James Davey in
London; editing by Keith Weir and Susan Fenton)
