English court sides with Lufthansa in Panasonic patent suit

Japanese electronics company  Panasonic infringed an aeroplane plug socket patent owned by German airline  Lufthansa, the English High Court has ruled.

In a judgment issued yesterday, July 22, Justice Paul Morgan found Lufthansa’s patent to be valid and infringed by a Panasonic division, US aerospace corporation  Astronics, and British aeroplane seat manufacturer  Safran Seats.

The patent (EP 0,881,145 B1) covers an apparatus for supplying high-voltage in an aeroplane cabin, allowing passengers to plug a device into a socket at their seat. Previous aeroplane sockets were only capable of providing low voltage, and required the use of an adapter to plug devices in.

Lufthansa sued Safran, Astronics and  Panasonic Avionics, a division of the Japanese multinational responsible for developing in-flight entertainment systems, for infringing the patent.

According to the defendants, the patent is obvious owing to an 1986 US patent, referred to in the judgment as “Neuenschwander”, as well as an 1989 patent known as “Sellati”.

Neuenschwander covers a contact system for use at the outlet end of an electric supply line, intended for connection of a plug with at least two contact pins, while Sellati describes a safety power outlet.

Panasonic and Astronics argued that certain key features of the Lufthansa patent were obvious in light of Neuenschwander and Sellati, in particular, the “timing feature”.

This refers to a feature which ensures that voltage is only supplied to the socket if a maximum contact time is not exceeded between the detection of the first and second contact pin of the plug.The parties were in complete disagreement over whether the prior art disclosed the timing feature.

This led to, in Morgan’s words, a “remarkable state of affairs” where lawyers for Lufthansa claimed there was consensus that Neuenschwander did not disclose the timing feature, while lawyers for Panasonic claimed Lufthansa had conceded the point.

Morgan sided with Lufthansa on this issue, as well as the timing feature’s disclosure in Sellati, nullifying one of the defendants’ key arguments for the Lufthansa patent being invalid.“

[The defendants’] case comes down to the assertion that the timing feature was beneficial and was not difficult to design so it was obvious. I am not persuaded by that general assertion,” Morgan wrote.

Having found the Lufthansa patent to be valid, Morgan also ruled that Panasonic, Astronics, and Safran’s in-flight power systems all infringed the German airline’s IP.

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