Ocado v Autostore German legal case - new article24 Mar 2021 18:54
https://www.iam-media.com/litigation/in-latest-litigation-play-ocado-looks-quick-leverage-in-rivals-largest-market
In latest litigation play, Ocado looks for quick leverage in rival’s largest market
The multi-jurisdictional battle between the online UK retailer and AutoStore has taken another turn with Ocado's filing of a pair of lawsuits in Germany against its rival
Online grocery retailer Ocado has taken its IP fight with rival AutoStore to Germany, filing two suits last week in Mannheim and Munich.
The filings - which allege that Ocado's IP rights have been infringed by AutoStore’s Black Line robot - add to the growing legal tussle between the pair. This already spans cases in the US and the UK, and relates to technology used to fulfil customer shopping orders
In a statement, an Ocado spokesperson explained that German, Polish and Norwegian AutoStore companies were named as defendants and claimed that Germany was the company’s largest market. “Ocado takes the breach of its IP rights seriously and will continue to defend its position as appropriate," the spokesperson concluded.
The utility models in suit are:
DE202014011467 U1 – “Load handling device for removing units from a storage system”.
DE202014011468 U1 – “Load handling device for removing units from a storage system”.
Applications for both were filed in 2014 and published earlier this year.
Ocado is presumably confident in the quality of its two UMs and any injunction would hand the company powerful leverage over its courtroom rival.
The legal fight between the pair began last year when AutoStore, which is headquartered in Norway but owned by US private equity business Thomas H Lee Partners, filed lawsuits on both sides of the Atlantic accusing its rival of patent infringement. “Our ownership of the technology at the heart of Ocado’s warehousing system is clear,” AutoStore’s CEO said at the time.
Ocado, which has seen sales soar in the UK as consumers have embraced online shopping during the covid-19 pandemic, countered earlier this year with its own US case. In that suit the company alleged that AutoStore had committed fraud against the USPTO over the filing of patents in the US related to a “central cavity robot”. The German cases only add to what is an increasingly fractious dispute.
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