2024-09-13 - LD Munich - Philips v. Belkin et al. - UPC_CFI_390/2023
- Aktenzeichen:
- UPC_CFI_390/2023
- Datum:
- Spruchkörper:
- Court of First Instance - Munich (DE) Local Division
- Art:
- Proceeding Decision
- Parteien:
- Koninklijke Philips N.V. v. REDACTED PARTY, Belkin GmbH, Belkin International, Inc.,, Belkin Limited
Kernaussage: The Munich Local Division decided that the concept of infringer under Art.
2024-09-13 - LD Munich - Philips
v.
Belkin et al. - UPC_CFI_390/2023
landmark
The Munich Local Division decided that the concept of infringer under Art. 25 and 26 UPCA is an autonomous concept of Union law and that individual directors of an infringing company may be enjoined as intermediaries. Following the Court of Justice in Louboutin, an infringer is a person who actively performs the use, which in practice means the person who appears as maker or supplier, or who gives the trade the impression of making or selling in its own name and for its own account; on that test the three Belkin companies were infringers and the three individuals were not. But under Art. 63(1) sentence 2 UPCA a managing director or director supplies the company with the very services that make it able to act at all, so he is an intermediary within the meaning of Art. 11 sentence 3 of the Enforcement Directive, and no breach of a duty of care or other culpability element is required. The consequence the division draws is symmetrical: intermediaries can be enjoined but owe no damages and no accounting. Two headnotes on claim construction complete the decision — subject matter drawn from the description belongs to the claim only if the claim expresses it, and where several embodiments are presented as being according to the invention the claim terms are in doubt read to cover all of them, which is what brought the accused Qi transmitters inside claim 20.
Nichtigkeitsgründe
Art. 138 EPCNovelty
Patent survived (this ground)Art. 54 EPC · Art. 138(1)(a) EPC
“The novelty attacks all failed. D1 does not disclose communication based on modulation of the power signal, so feature 20.1.1 is missing, and relying on D2 and D6 to fill it is an impermissible combination rather than proof of common general knowledge. D2 has no separate request phase preceding the negotiation phase. D3 contains no confirmation of the request. D6's exchange of enumeration information is neither a request to enter a negotiation phase nor an acknowledgement of one [B.III.3.a-d].”
Inventive Step
Patent survived (this ground)Art. 56 EPC · Art. 138(1)(a) EPC
“The inventive-step attack starting from D4, the Qi standard in version 1.0, failed. A skilled person faced with the problem of implementing the receiver's wish to renegotiate the power transfer contract would not provide the corresponding acknowledgement messages, and neither D4 nor D2, D5 or D6 lays out the patented system for entering and conducting a negotiation phase [B.III.4].”
Added Matter
Patent survived (this ground)Art. 123(2) EPC · Art. 138(1)(c) EPC
“The added-matter attack on the words 'being indicative' in features 19.6.1 and 20.6.1 failed. The application as filed already said that the acknowledgement need not be a separate message and may be a simple one-bit acknowledgement or part of a message containing other information, so the skilled person derived from it that the acknowledgement may also be implied by a message with a different primary content [B.III.1].”
Insufficiency of Disclosure
Patent survived (this ground)Art. 83 EPC · Art. 138(1)(b) EPC
“The invention is disclosed clearly and completely enough. On the understanding that the independent claims protect only transmitters able to enter a negotiation phase and expressly to accept or reject the request, the skilled person can reproduce the claimed methods and devices without becoming inventive [B.III.2].”
Inoffiziell
Inoffizielle KI-Übersetzung
Dies ist eine automatische, von KI erstellte Übersetzung, die Fehler enthalten kann. Rechtsverbindlich ist allein das Originaldokument in der Verfahrenssprache (German).