Dive Brief:
- A court in London has dismissed a lawsuit by AutoStore that claimed U.K.-based Ocado violated patents for robotic order-assembly technology owned by the Norwegian warehouse-automation company, AutoStore said in a Thursday statement.
- AutoStore said it “disagrees with the Court’s decision,” adding that the ruling “has no impact” on its business or operations.
- The ruling removes a significant legal headache for Ocado, which is in the midst of building automated online grocery fulfillment centers for Kroger.
Dive Insight:
The decision by the U.K. High Court to throw out AutoStore’s lawsuit against Ocado is the latest development in a multi-pronged intellectual property feud that has engulfed the companies, both of which offer retailers automation solutions that depend on fleets of self-guided vehicles to fetch products in warehouses.
The High Court judge who oversaw the proceeding concluded that the two AutoStore patents that were still part of the company’s suit against Ocado in the U.K. were not valid, Ocado noted in a statement last week. An Ocado spokesperson called the case a “misguided exercise by AutoStore,” according to a report by the Evening Standard.
AutoStore, which is working on automation projects for grocers including H-E-B and The Giant Company, said in its statement last week that the Technical Boards of Appeal of the European Patent Office recently upheld one of the patents at issue in the dispute.
The high court’s decision ends one chapter in the legal war between AutoStore and Ocado, but the companies remain at odds on other fronts.
When AutoStore filed its lawsuit against Ocado in the U.K. High Court in October 2020, the Norwegian company also sued Ocado in Virginia. Both suits were part of an effort by AutoStore to stop Ocado from manufacturing and selling its technology, known as the Ocado Smart Platform.
The Norwegian company also asked the U.S. International Trade Commission (ITC) to bar Ocado from importing its equipment into the United States, where Ocado is working with Kroger on a multibillion-dollar project to develop a fleet of automated e-commerce warehouses and related facilities. An administrative law judge for the ITC dealt a setback to AutoStore in December 2021, ruling that certain of the company’s patents were invalid.
Ocado is also supplying automation technology to Sobeys of Canada and Sweden’s ICA Gruppen, among others.
Ocado took legal action in New Hampshire in January 2021 in a bid to block AutoStore from using its Blackline robot technology and Router software system, which are central to AutoStore’s automated fulfillment platform, according to a summary on Ocado’s website of its disputes with AutoStore. The following month, Ocado filed an anti-trust complaint against AutoStore in Virginia.
In addition, Ocado lodged a patent-related complaint against Ocado in courts in German cities of Mannheim and Munich in March 2021.
