English High Court invalidates patent in Sony suit

The English High Court has ruled that a patent challenged by mobile technology company Sony is invalid.

Mr Roger Wyand QC, deputy High Court judge, made the ruling on October 10.

The case concerns European patent number EP (UK) 2,254,311, which is owned by SSH Communications Security, an encryption channel monitoring company.

The patent is called “Maintaining address translations for data communications”.

Sony had filed an invalidity suit against SSH.

SSH put forward three sets of conditional amendments and counterclaimed for infringement by mobile phones sold by Sony.

Sony denied infringement and objected to the amendments.

The patent covers an address translation that is “provided by a network address translator” for communication of data packets between two devices.

It was published in August 2011.

Wyand said: “I find that all the claims of the patent are invalid. The Sony Xperia devices would infringe claims 1, 3, 6, 8, 10 and 13 if they were valid in their unamended form and in their proposed amended forms, were they to be allowed.”

In May 2015, SSH sued Sony in Germany over the same patent. The decision is expected to be available in Autumn this year.

Sony filed a nullity suit against the patent in Germany and challenged its validity in the US as well as the UK (which has now been decided).

Erkki Yli-Juuti, vice president, intellectual property at SSH, said at the time: “We are more committed than ever to protect our IP, preferring licence arrangements without litigation whenever possible.”

A spokesperson for Sony told WIPR that they are unable to comment on pending litigation.