The UK High Court recently invalidated NOCO's patent GB2257858 after Chinese company Carku filed invalidation proceedings in a dispute over battery-powered jump leads for cars. The patent guards a unique method for battery-powered jumper cables.
Following NOCO's request for Amazon to delist its items due to patent infringement accusations, Carku filed an additional claim for damages.
Shortly later, the US company NOCO counterclaimed for patent infringement, claiming that the complaints to Amazon were not threats. According to NOCO, the complaints might be justified on the grounds that GB 858 was legitimate and infringed, with the latter claims founded on the doctrine of equivalent.
Carku's invalidity attack was based on three pieces of earlier work, Krieger, Richardson, and Projecta.
The judgement ruled that GB 858 is invalid for obviousness over Projecta and Richardson's previous art. He did, however, dismiss the invalidity attack on the third piece of previous art. He also decided that, if the court had ruled the patent legitimate, the delisted Carku items would not have infringed the patent in most situations.
Furthermore, presiding judge Richard Meade determined that NOCO's interactions with Amazon were actionable threats that were not justified. Meade concluded that the court should conduct an investigation into the amount of damages that NOCO should pay to Carku.
The UK proceedings follow a series of disagreements between Carku and NOCO, during which the latter business undertook a two-year campaign to remove any infringing product advertised on Amazon. The majority of the takedowns occurred between 2020 and 2022, during the COVID-19 epidemic. Carku representatives say that this element considerably exacerbates the damage done to the company.
Carku contacted Amazon, who, according to Carku's legal counsel, was unwilling to change its product removal policy. As a result, Amazon would only reinstate the products after receiving a complete statement of non-infringement.
Concurrently, the court stayed another case involving a non-infringement dispute involving Ring, a Carku product distributor, awaiting the resolution of Carku's dispute with NOCO.
This is the first UK merits decision to address whether a removal request, such as the one submitted by NOCO to Amazon, constituted an actionable threat under Section 70 of the Patents Act 1977. Until now, courts have exclusively applied rulings pertaining to this specific case law to interim proceedings.
The UK proceedings are part of a global litigation sequence. NOCO intends to defend its patents in numerous jurisdictions. In Germany, for example, another Carku distributor, RDI, has filed a non-infringement claim against NOCO at the Düsseldorf Regional Court.
Simultaneously, comparable processes are underway in both the United States and Canada. These involve several Carku distributors, as well as identical infringement and non-infringement procedures brought about by NOCO's take down requests.
The US International Trade Commission decided in favour of Gooloo in a patent infringement action involving a similar battery-powered jump-starter device on August 29. The ITC, on the other hand, denied all of NOCO's claims against Gooloo, including a request that Gooloo withdraw from the US market.
It also turned down a plea for an injunction to prevent the sale of products that purportedly infringed on NOCO's patents.