Agfa v Guccio Gucci (UPC_CFI_278/2023)
Decision date:
30 April 2025
Osborne Clarke summary
- The claimant, Agfa, is the proprietor of a patent relating to manufacturing methods for decorating natural leather. Agfa claimed that the defendants, various Gucci entities, had infringed the patent. The defendants made a counterclaim for revocation. Both the infringement claim and revocation counterclaim were admissible but were unfounded and therefore dismissed.
- In relation to claim interpretation, the court decided that if the specification is not consistent with the claims as granted, it cannot assist with a broad interpretation. The patent may be used as its "own lexicon". Thus, the term "achromatic" in claim 1 was given a narrow interpretation based on the narrow definition provided in the description.
- The court did not allow the defendants to raise new grounds of invalidity or new documents in the oral hearing for the first time.
- The defendants' invalidity counterclaim alleged that the patent was not novel, and that it lacked inventive step over both prior art and public prior use. With respect to the inventive step argument based on prior art, the Hamburg LD decided that a combination of the prior art would not lead the skilled person clearly and unambiguously to print an image and combine them together according to the solution of the patent in suit. As for the public prior use inventive step attack, the court held that the use did not amount to a disclosure of the specific type of base coat used in the products.
- Agfa's infringement claim also failed because the Hamburg LD found that the attacked embodiments did not make use of all of the features of the claims.
Issue
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