German court says Sony did not infringe rival’s patent

A German court has ruled that mobile technology company Sony did not infringe a patent covering data communications.

The Düsseldorf District Court ruled yesterday, October 25, that Sony did not infringe the patent, owned by encryption channel monitoring company SSH Communications Security.

The case concerns European patent number EP 2,254,311, called “Maintaining address translations for data communications”.

It covers an address translation that is “provided by a network address translator” for communication of data packets between two devices, and was published in August 2011.

SSH sued Sony over the patent in May 2015. Sony then filed a nullity suit in Germany challenging the validity of the SSH patent.

The infringement trial was held in September this year and the court found that Sony did not infringe the German part of the patent.

Erkki Yli-Juuti, vice president of intellectual property at SSH, said: “We are obviously disappointed with the result but at the same time appreciate that the issues raised were extremely complex both from a legal and technical point of view.

“Our attorneys are currently studying and digesting the judgment. We are carefully studying the opportunity to appeal,” he added.

On October 18, WIPR reported that in parallel litigation, the English High Court ruled that the same patent, which was challenged by Sony, is invalid.

A spokesperson for Sony told WIPR that it has no comment to make on pending litigation.