London High Court: Ocado Wins Against AutoStore in Patent Feud

London High Court: Ocado Wins Against AutoStore in Patent Feud

The U.K. High Court has ruled in favor of the British online supermarket and technology group Ocado on all counts in a patent infringement suit brought by the Norwegian robotics firm Autostore Holdings Ltd., after the judge dismissed its patent infringement claims.

The two leading inventors of warehouse storage technology were facing off in multiple jurisdictions around the world to protect their intellectual property. Ocado, like AutoStore, licenses its technology to retailers around the world and uses it for its British grocery delivery service.

This comes as a major victory for Ocado who previously in March 2022, when the U.S. International Trade Commission decided that all Autostore Holdings Ltd.'s cavity-bot patents were invalid.

Judge Richard Hacon of London High Court, ruled that Oslo-listed AutoStore's patents were invalid and, in any event, Ocado did not infringe them.

“AutoStore disagrees with the Court’s decision, especially given that the Technical Boards of Appeal of the European Patent Office upheld one of the patents in issue as valid just a few weeks ago,” the company said in response to Hacon's judgment. It further said that the decision has no impact on its business or operations.

AutoStore had originally alleged infringement of six patents against Ocado in October 2020.

Out of these, two were invalidated by the European Patent Office before the judgment was handed down, two were withdrawn by AutoStore shortly before the hearing started, and the remaining two patents were invalidated by Hacon in his judgment, Ocado said.

Ocado in its statement while welcoming Hacon’s ruling said that that even if the Court had not invalidated these remaining patents, Ocado's technology did not infringe them, and Ocado's robots also did not infringe the patents that AutoStore had withdrawn from the case.

Presently, Ocado claims against AutoStore for infringing Ocado's intellectual property are still continuing in Germany and New Hampshire in the United States.