Australian court revokes Caffitaly coffee capsule patents
The Federal Court of Australia has revoked claims in patents covering coffee capsules in a dispute between two companies.
On Friday, June 19, the Australian court refused to issue an injunction requested by Italy-based Caffitaly System against One Collective Group, and the husband and wife behind the company.
Caffitaly System had asked the court for injunctive and pecuniary relief, after accusing One Collective Group of infringing three patents, all of which relate to coffee capsule technology.
The Australian patents allegedly being infringed were numbers 2003200627; 2010227121; and 2008259388.
In response, One Collective Group (which imports and sells coffee capsules) claimed that each of the relevant claims was invalid and brought a cross-claim seeking orders for their revocation.
Yesterday, Judge John Nicholas ordered that claims 1, 2, 9, 16 and 17 of the ‘627 patent, claims 1, 2, 3, 4, 5 and 14 of the ‘121 patent, and claims 34, 35 and 36 of the ‘388 patent be revoked.
On the ‘627 patent, One Collective Group argued that claims 1,2,9, 16 and 17 were invalid for lack of inventive step, citing coffee capsules made by Keurig, Mars, Kenco, Philips and Nespresso as relevant prior art.
“In my opinion the design of an espresso coffee cartridge for use in an espresso machine having the features of the combination defined by claims 1 and 2 would be obvious to a non-inventive product design engineer equipped with the common general knowledge at the priority date,” said Nicholas.
He added: It would not require inventive ingenuity or any contribution to the art that was “beyond the skill of the calling” to design a coffee cartridge within each of those claims as at the priority date: Allsop Inc v Bintang Ltd (1989).”
The court concluded that each of the asserted claims was invalid for lack of inventive step.
While One Collective Group also argued that the patent claims were invalid for lack of novelty, in light of US patent number 4,921,712 (which describes a coffee brewing system), this was rejected by the court.
Nicholas found the claims in the ‘121 patent invalid for lack of inventive step, while the claims in the ‘388 patent were invalid for insufficiency.
“I find that the steps that the person skilled in the art would be required to take in order to make a capsule meeting the requirements of claim 34, would be neither readily apparent nor standard or routine in character. The problems that would be likely to arise would require that person to engage in a prolonged and difficult exercise in problem solving with an uncertain outcome,” he concluded.
Both Caffitaly System and One Collective Group were ordered to file written submissions on costs.
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