AutoStore to pay Ocado $256M in patent lawsuit settlement

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Left, Ocado’s automated storage and retrieval system (ASRS), and proper, AutoStore’s ASRS. | Supply: Ocado, AutoStore.

Ocado Group and AutoStore Holdings have introduced a whole settlement of all claims between the businesses of their international patent dispute. The dispute started in October 2020, when AutoStore asserted that Ocado infringed upon six of its patents, and included lawsuits in each the UK and the US.

Each AutoStore and Ocado function automated storage and retrieval techniques (ASRS) that function on comparable ideas. The phrases of the brand new settlement embrace AutoStore paying £200 million, round $256 million, to Ocado in installments over the subsequent two years. All the patent litigation claims are additionally being withdrawn globally.

Ocado and AutoStore each agreed to a mutually useful international cross-license of one another’s pre-2020 patents, and each corporations can proceed to make use of and market all of their current merchandise with out problem. Beneath the phrases of the settlement, Ocado retains unique rights to the Single Area Robotic. 

“I’m happy we’ve been in a position to settle the disputes in a constructive and collaborative method,” Tim Steiner, CEO of Ocado, stated. “We are able to now every transfer ahead and focus on offering our companions with world-beating know-how.”

“We’re glad to have achieved a decision that offers each corporations [the] alternative and freedom to commercialize our intensive patent portfolios,” Mat Hovland Vikse, CEO of AutoStore, stated. “This settlement resolves our variations and permits us to proceed specializing in our respective enterprise objectives.”

Earlier this 12 months, the UK Excessive Courtroom dominated that AutoStore’s patents have been invalid as a result of AutoStore had disclosed its know-how publically in a enterprise cope with the Central Financial institution of Russia earlier than the corporate filed its patents. 

In December 2021, AutoStore misplaced the same patent infringement lawsuit filed with the Worldwide Commerce Fee (ITC). US ITC Decide Charles Bullock dominated three of AutoStore’s patents concerned within the case have been invalid, and that Ocado didn’t infringe upon the fourth patent within the trial.