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Assuming the scope of the claims of Sycurio’s European patent, whose revocation was made public on 5th May by the European Patent Office (EPO) as per Victor Value’s post of 6th May, is similar to that in Sycurio’s UK patent, which Sycurio alleges PCIP infringed and which PCIP claims is invalid, then the invalidity of Sycurio’s European patent presumably tilts the scales in PCIP’s favour in the UK court case, either through a successful trial outcome or a pre-trial settlement on PCIP’s terms.
The EPO examines only patent validity (not patent infringement), which it did in this case after PCIP and Eckoh objected to the grant of Sycurio's patent in July 2021. For Sycurio to succeed in the UK case it needs to prove both that PCIP infringed its UK patent and that the UK patent is valid. Good news that round one in Europe has gone to PCIP (and Eckoh) and that Sycurio’s European patent is invalid. A possible round two to come (let’s hope not as it can take years) if Sycurio can find any valid grounds to appeal.
Any views?
But you have to remember that summer holidays will intervene. I would be surprised if the judgment is made public before PCIP reports its full-year results in early September. My money is on some point between the full-year results and the AGM.
Simon,
I cut & pasted the link to the Law Review article in your post into my browser. I then cut & pasted into my browser the full references to Trevor Cook's reviews for each of 2019, 2020 and 2021 in Journal of Intellectual Property Law & Practice, which are set out in Footnote 2 of the Law Review article. To my surprise, this gave me full access to the articles. Using information about each of the cases for each year set out in the appendix to each year's review, I then analysed that information into plaintiff win/losses. The information I set out is therefore derived from those reports but not directly available within those reports without doing the analysis I did. The actual analysis is tedious but anyone wanting to check what I did should be able to do so using the information I have provided.
Hope this helps.
Using information from the source of Simon Gordon’s post today on the PCIP thread on Advfn, some facts emerge about patent cases in the court of first instance in the last three years for which analysis has been done. The number of cases which goes to court is very small.
In 2019, there were 16 cases in the court of first instance. In 10 of those the defendants, prevailed on the grounds that the patentee’s patents were invalid. In 5 cases the patentees prevailed as their patents were judged to have been infringed and valid (in the 4 of the 5 cases where validity was at issue). In the remaining case involving two patents, both patents were judged to have been infringed and one was judged valid but the other invalid (So: a score draw?).
In 2020, there were 13 cases in the court of first instance. In 8 cases the plaintiffs prevailed as their patents were judged to have been infringed and valid. The defendants prevailed in 3 cases as the patents weren’t infringed and/or were invalid. In 2 cases, each involving 2 patents, the patents were judged to have been infringed but 1 patent in each case was judged invalid (So: score-draws, again?). The author of the 2020 analysis notes that 2020 may be unusual: “This low proportion of patents that were held to be invalid contrasts with 2019, where only 4 out of the 18 patents the validity of which was challenged survived such challenge, and also previous years where typically considerably fewer than half the patents the validity of which was challenged survived.”
In 2021, there were 19 cases in the court of first instance. In 13 cases the plaintiffs prevailed as the patents were either judged infringed but invalid, or not infringed but invalid, or not infringed and valid. In 4 cases the plaintiffs prevailed as infringement was either admitted and or judged to have happened and the patents judged to have been valid. There were two cases of the score-draw variety.
So: given the small number of cases that actually go to court, the odds should favour a settlement on the eve of the trial (or on the eve of the second day of the trial as in the Eckoh case) and on PCIP’s terms as: one, the odds, based on the decided cases in 2019 and 2021, favour PCIP; two, the background to this case points to its being a try-on by Sycurio; and three, PCIP management, who appear to be of high integrity, have been as consistent & transparent about the case as possible, and strongly refute infringement. PCIP won’t blink first, in my view.
The senior management merry-go-round continues.
Of the 7 non-corporate partners of Argentex LLP at the time of the IPO in mid-2019, the partnership that runs Argentex day to day, only 3 partners now remain. Two partners, Carl Jani and Sam Williams, the former CFO, “left” last year, and a further two have “left” this year. One is Andrew Egan, a co-founder, who was Chief Commercial Officer, and 5.7% Argentex shareholder; the other is Dan Merrick, who was one of 5 senior sales staff.
Olivia Lang, who was Chief Compliance officer, was made partner in 2021 but also “left” this year.
The just published interim results included one-time non-recurring costs of £0.8m for “senior staff changes” (and set up of overseas operations) so evidently one or more pay-off was involved.
The CEO may not be the sharpest knife in the box but it looks like he keeps a sharp set of knives at hand.
I am a holder, and have been for some time.
I agree with those who object to the LTIP; it is joke at our expense.
The revenue and TSR hurdles are ludicrously undemanding. In his interview with Paul Hill of Vox Markets yesterday the CEO said that the revenue CAGR in the four-year period since IPO has around 30% (it was about this from 2016 to 2021 if you calculate the number) and “and that there is no reason why we shouldn’t be able to track that sort of metric going forward”. That makes the 15% revenue CAGR risible, especially in view of all the current investment in people, expansion overseas and technology. Similarly, a target TSR of 10% compound for a dividend-paying growth company is hardly a "hurdle" at all.
The NEDS and “certain of the larger institutional shareholders” who nodded the LTIP through must have been asleep at the wheel. It would be interesting to hear who those institutional shareholders were and their rationale for agreeing to it.
And, of course, by paying no further dividend in 2022, the dividend payment in 2023 in respect of the nine months to 31 December 2022 will count towards the TSR target; how convenient. The whole thing leaves a bad taste and is insulting to shareholders.
Yes, the objections from both PCIP & Eckoh arrived at the same time.
If you go to Victor's post on EP 3402177 then click on the link dated 19/04/2022 entitled "Letter for change of applicant's representative" you will see the resignation.
It's quite an achievement to pay ÂŁ112m for a company and then shortly afterwards to unite your two principal competitors in determination to wipe out that company's IP portfolio.
Interesting, Victor. The Asia Pacific case may be the second one that was referred to in Sycurio's accounts, started in March 2022? The database to which you have posted the link seems to be for corporate customers only so no access to the detail, unfortunately. We should speak to exchange views on all your finds!
Victor
Fantastic finds. Hat tip. Essentially it's the whole case laid out in quite some granularity (to say the least!) about the validity of the UK patent as well. The grounds for requesting revocation of The European patent are very similar to the skeleton grounds of invalidity for the UK patent put forward last year by PCIP's lawyers to the High Court. Quite some success for Sycurio to have Eckoh and PCIP simultaneously requesting revocation of Sycurio's European patent! Perhaps payback from Eckoh for the 2013 case? Also I note that Sycurio's long-standing patent attorneys , Mathy & Squires (they filed the original UK patent application), resigned in April this year as representatives of Sycurio's European patent within 5 days of receiving notice from the EPO of PCIP's and Eckoh's opposition to the European patent.
These documents strengthen my view that PCIP is going for Sycurio's jugular to try to force a settlement on PCIP's terms.
Thanks, Victor. Looks like that application will fail then as the deadline given in the letter has passed. The tone of the Examination Report seems quite damning and talks of fact that is is regrettable that "documents that were not found at the time of the original search." The documents show that the invention (or aspects of it) was not new.....
Victor
Very good finds & very interesting reading. So we can conclude that PCIP has full insight into the strenghths & weaknesses of the Eckoh case because it has a court order giving it access to witness and expert statements from the case and PCIP has access to all the documents you have found and it is using the same (or one of the same) defence barrister as Eckoh used in its case. And we know that the Eckoh case settled after the first day of the trial with the judge ordering both sides to pay their own costs. What we don't know is whether the royalty that was payable under the licence agreement that Eckoh entered into as part of the confidential settlement was any more than a nominal amount, but Eckoh's legal advisers would certainly have been privy to those details.
Eckoh's Defence and Counterclaim cite what sound like rather dubious tactics allegedly used by Semafone in that Semafone, prior to launching legal proceedings against Eckoh, is said to have contacted Eckoh customers to suggest that Eckoh was infringing Semafone's UK patent. Has anything similar happened in the current case, I wonder?
Victor
Thanks. I have come to the same conclusion as you, having found a way of searching online the UK High Court database of cases from 2012. This shows that Semafone/Sycurio has only initiated two sets of legal proceedings since the start of 2012 in the UK for alleged patent infringement: against Eckoh in 2013 and against PCIP in 2021 Therefore Eckoh's counterclaim against the validity of Semafone's patents, withdrawn as part of the settlement in 2015, is the only counterclaim there has been . And we know from a search of Pacer that Semafone has only brought one case of alleged patent infringment in the US, the case against PCIP in September 2021.
In its recently published accounts Sycurio stated that: "On 15 September and 11 March 2022 the company began legal proceedings in respect of two separate cases of alleged patent infringement". Proceedings were started against PCIP in the UK on 27 August 2021 and in the US on 15 September 2021. As the proceedings started on 11 March 2022 were not in the UK or US that raises the question of where they were started. The information in the accounts could be wrong (ie, there is no second case) or the proceedings have started in another jurisdiction.
According to the charge documents registered at Companies House when Semafone's purchaser took out the bank loan in August 2021 Semafone's IP portfolio consisted of 6 granted patents: UK GB2473376 (publication number 1804513.8); Europe EP 20180715240 (publication number EP 36030430) and four US patents: 8,750,471, 9,858,573, 10,402,826, 11,049,108. As the vast bulk of Sycurio's business is the UK & US where its patents are granted, that leaves open the question of which jurisdiction the other proceedings have been started in . Some of Sycurio's sales come from Canada & Australia, markets that PCIP has now opened offices in, so perhaps there? Overall, the reported second case leaves me puzzled.
As part of the settlement with Eckoh, according to the charge documents at Companies House, Sycurio granted Eckoh a licence on 18 March 2015 to use GB patent 2473376 and US patent 8.570, 471. The same documents state that: "Semafone also licences its IP rights and assets in its software products to customers pursuant to a Master Licence Agreement that its enters into with each customer". So: I guess Semafone would have a bit of a problem if PCIP succeeded with its claims of patent invalidity, which are against the UK patent and the four US patents!
The only public information that I have been able to find on the Eckoh settlement is that Eckoh
agreed to pay Semafone (undisclosed) royalties for a worldwide licence to use the two patents; the royalties had no readily discernible impact on Eckoh’s margins after 2015. Semafone disclosed that it received a contribution towards "costs and damages" but its legal costs incurred exceeded the contribution received: Semafone's net legal costs were £0.66m; Eckoh’s after an undisclosed insurance reimbursement
Victor
I meant to add a further detail. According judge's order giving PCIP access to documents from the Semafone v. Eckoh case, the matter actually went to trial but was apparently settled after the first day. PCIP has been granted access to witness statements and exhibits, and experts' reports and exhibits from that case.
Victor,
Thanks very much for that.
If I have understood your information correctly there is only one recorded counterclaim for revocation against Sycurio's only granted UK patent, and that was from Eckoh in 2014, and the counterclaim was subsequently withdrawn. It therefore looks as though PCIP should only have referred to a "counterclaim" and not "counterclaims* in its year end update. But it is clear from the court record of the case against Eckoh that PCIP's lawyers successfully applied for, and were granted access in January this year to documents relating to the Eckoh case. This must be part of the investigation into Sycurio's UK patent that PCIP was referring to.
Regarding the claim lodged on 11th March 2022, Sycurio's accounts state that the legal proceedings relating to this case are separate to the one lodged on 15th September 2021 against PCIP. The defendant must therefore be an entity other than PCIP. As nothing shows up in Pacer for Semafone/Sycurio other than the PCIP case, I assume that the second case must have been brought in the UK. As we know the claim was lodged on 11th March 2022 and that the plaintiff is Semafone/Sycurio, does anyone know how to track down the case number from that information so that we can find out who the defendant is? (If necessary I will go down to the High Court in person to see if I can track this information down). It would be interesting to find out more: if the case against PCIP was a bluff, the second case may be a further bluff to reinforce the first bluff.
I agree. But if PCIP really has a strong case on the invalidity of Sycurio's patents then the terms of any settlement would surely be in PCIP's favour and PCIP would have the bargaining tool of threatening to press ahead and destroy the value of Sycurio's IP. PCIP also has the advantage of having shown in public that it should be able to fund the cases through to conclusion so there is little to no posturing in this regard on its part.