{"id":491,"date":"2024-05-16T14:01:06","date_gmt":"2024-05-16T14:01:06","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/ipfray.com\/?p=491"},"modified":"2024-05-16T14:23:16","modified_gmt":"2024-05-16T14:23:16","slug":"upc-requires-security-with-official-capital-of-1-e-patent-holder-seeks-pi-to-complicate-offside-detection-at-euro-2024-soccer-tournament","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/ipfray.com\/staging1\/upc-requires-security-with-official-capital-of-1-e-patent-holder-seeks-pi-to-complicate-offside-detection-at-euro-2024-soccer-tournament\/","title":{"rendered":"UPC requires security: with official capital of 1 euro, patent holder seeks PI to complicate offside detection at EURO 2024 soccer tournament"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
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Context:<\/strong> On June 3, 2024, the Hamburg Local Division (LD) of the Unified Patent Court (UPC) will hear a request for a preliminary injunction (PI) targeting technology used to assist soccer referees (May 14, 2024 ip fray<\/strong> article<\/a>). Dutch company Ballinno is suing European soccer governing body UEFA, the organizer of the EURO 2024 tournament of national teams that will take place in Germany starting in mid June.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

What’s new:<\/strong> The court has just published a Tuesday (May 14, 2024) order (PDF<\/a>) requiring Ballinno to give security to the (initial) amount of \u20ac56,000, given that the company’s registered share capital is \u20ac1 and no assets other than the patent-in-suit are known, but denying the defendants’ request to value the dispute at \u20ac2 million (the court believes, for now, that \u20ac500,000 is adequate) as well as their petition to appoint a technically qualified judge.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Direct impact:<\/strong> Barring a settlement, the order ensures that the hearing will go forward on June 3. The security amount is so limited that it will presumably be provided in time. Getting a technically qualified judge involved could have caused delay. But for the patentee it does not necessarily bode well that the court may already have identified the patent as technically shallow.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Wider ramifications:<\/strong> This is the latest decision in which a UPC panel makes a case-specific determination on the need to provide security for litigation expenses in a fee-shifting scenario following the rejection of a complaint or (as here) application. A few days ago, ip fray<\/strong> was first to publish three parallel decisions by the Munich LD in a case in which a valuable patent portfolio acquired from Philips and the plaintiff’s ability to fund expensive U.S. litigation were considered indications of recovery being possible should the defendants prevail (May 11, 2024 ip fray<\/strong> article<\/a>).<\/p>\n<\/div>\n\n\n\n

The plaintiff, Ballinno, is not the original patent holder. The patent application was filed by a company named INVIT (which apparently never practiced the patent either).<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The order that was published today provides some interesting context. The plaintiff (Ballinno) was assigned the patent-in-suit on January 22, 2024, and brought its PI request on April 18. But the prior owner already sent an infringement notice to one or more of the defendants on October 17, 2023.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Defendants entitled to security<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

Ballinno’s capital amounts to only \u20ac 1 (one euro). The company likely has more money than that, given that it affords Brinkhof’s Rien Broekstra<\/a>, but not necessarily enough to reimburse the defendants’ litigation expenses if it loses the case. No assets of that company other than the patent-in-suit (which could be completely devalued if Ballinno loses this case) are known.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In light of the overall circumstances, the judicial panel (Presiding Judge Sabine Klepsch, Judge-rapporteur Dr. Stefan Schilling and Judge Sam Granata) determined that defendants’ interests in the provision of collateral outweighed any potential concerns over whether this would compromise the patentee’s access to justice.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The fact that the patent has been assigned to a shell company, presumably for the exclusive purpose of bringing this litigation, may also be part of a strategy to manufacture “urgency” despite already having given an infringement notice in October 2023. The court will presumably see through any such smokescreen.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Value of dispute<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

The fees are calculated based on the value of the dispute as set by the court. The defendants asked the court to set that number at \u20ac2 million or higher, in which case the required collateral would have amounted to \u20ac200,000 or higher. Technology provider Kinexon particularly argued that (in the court’s words) they “fear an irreparable harm to their reputation with other customers and further financial harm.” But that argument did not convince the court, so the value of the dispute was set at \u20ac500,000, resulting in a security amount of \u20ac56,000, though the panel expressely reserves the right to make adjustments at a later stage of proceeding.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Patent deemed technically easy to understand<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

The defendants’ request to appoint a technically qualified judge presumably amounted to delay tactics. If the UPC had to identify the right expert from its pool of technically qualified judges and find a time where that expert could participate in the oral hearing (with enough time beforehand to study the pleadings), that could have made it impossible to decide prior to the EURO tournament.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The panel consists of three judges without an engineering background, but they all have significant patent expertise (particularly Presiding Judge Klepsch), so they feel they can figure out the teachings of the patent-in-suit themselves.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In its first article on this case<\/a>, ip fray<\/strong> already suspected that the absence of a technically qualified judge from the panel meant that the patent-in-suit is considered simple enough for legally qualified judges to understand.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The plaintiff did not generally oppose the appointment of a technically qualified judge, as it obviously didn’t want to concede that this is what would be pejoratively called a “trivial patent.” It just asked the court not to delay the resolution of the matter as a result of the appointment of a technically qualified judge.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

There is nothing in the order published today that makes this lawsuit appear more credible. Much to the contrary, the plot is thickening that someone is just gambling and trying to capitalize on the fact that the UPC has a limited body of PI case law, owing to the fact that the court is less than one year old.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The UPC’s Hamburg Local Division has already determined that the patent-in-suit is simple enough so as not to require the involvement of a technically qualified judge.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"nf_dc_page":"","_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[12,54],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-491","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-patent-litigation","category-unified-patent-court"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/ipfray.com\/staging1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/491","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/ipfray.com\/staging1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/ipfray.com\/staging1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ipfray.com\/staging1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ipfray.com\/staging1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=491"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/ipfray.com\/staging1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/491\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":493,"href":"https:\/\/ipfray.com\/staging1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/491\/revisions\/493"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/ipfray.com\/staging1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=491"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ipfray.com\/staging1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=491"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ipfray.com\/staging1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=491"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}