Delhi High Court Rejects Philip's Suit Against Sale Of VCDs Over Alleged Infringement Of Its Patent In 'Digital Transmission System'
The Delhi High Court has dismissed a suit filed by Koninklijke Philips N.V., simply branded Philips, against a company manufacturing and selling VCDs alleging that the same violated its “Digital Transmission System” patent.
Justice Mini Pushkarna observed that Philips failed to establish any infringement by the defendant company located in Haryana and its Director- M Bathla.
Philips alleged that the company and its Director were manufacturing and selling using MPEG-1 coding audio compression/expansion system, which infringed its registered patent.
As per the suit, the patent in question covers an efficient audio signal compression and transmission system, which is used in the MPEG-1 and MPEG-2 audio compression systems and works for different sample frequencies and transmission bit rates. It also has the objective of transmitting digital wide-band audio signals in a flexible and highly versatile transmission system.
Dismissing the suit, the Court observed that Philips failed to show that each aspect of the defendant's product was covered by the features of the Claim of suit patent.
“Rather, the plaintiff has straightaway compared the product of the defendants, i.e., the VCD with the end result which is achieved in the suit patent, i.e., the frame length of the audio frame of the VCD of the defendants, which as per the plaintiff, matches with the audio frame length achieved through the system described in the suit patent,” the Court said.
It added that the suit patent covered a product or a system having particular components, and was not a patent over a method or process or a technique.
The Court also said that claim mapping done by Philips is faulty and does not establish that the suit patent covers the defendants‟ product, or that the same infringes the system patent of the former.
“It is also to be noted that the defendants did not manufacture the VCDs, but only replicated the same by use of the replication machinery acquired from Singulus. As such, the process of replication does not involve any transmission or compression mechanism,” the Court said.
It concluded that the Digital Transmission System covered in the suit patent was not present in the replication process employed by the defendants to make VCDs.
Title: KONINKLIJKE PHILIPS N.V v. M. BATHLA & ANR