German court halts Ocado case against AutoStore

Ocado was under the cosh on Friday after a German court considered that its IP rights may be invalid and halted its case against Norwegian robotics company AutoStore.

Munich District Court suspended Ocado’s proceedings to block the sale of AutoStore's B1 robot in Germany over intellectual property concerns. The Court noted that Ocado’s utility model IP rights in the action were likely to be invalid.

It considered that, despite Ocado having made significant last-minute amendments to the claims of its utility models, these were likely invalid because the claims were seeking to cover more than had been disclosed in the application for the utility models as originally filed.

Ocado and AutoStore, both of which make robots to use for food picking in warehouses, have been locked in legal battles around the world over patent infringement claims.

Last month, a US court threw out AutoStore’s attempts to claim patent infringement by Ocado.

At 0920 GMT, Ocado shares were down 3.9% at 1,498.50p.