Ocado wins UK patent infringement suit brought by AutoStore

Online supermarket and technology company Ocado said on Thursday that it had "comprehensively won" a patent infringement suit brought by Norwegian warehouse robotics group AutoStore at the UK High Court.

The judge ruled that the AutoStore patents were invalid and, in any event, Ocado did not infringe them.

AutoStore had originally asserted six patents against Ocado in October 2020. Of these six, two were invalidated by the European Patent Office before judgment was handed down, two were withdrawn by AutoStore shortly before the hearing started and the remaining two patents were invalidated by Judge Hacon in Thursday’s judgment, Ocado said.

"Judge Hacon decided that even if he had not invalidated these remaining patents, Ocado's OSP did not infringe them - and that Ocado's bots also did not infringe the patents that Autostore had withdrawn from the case," the company said.