Construction Diffusion Vente Internationale SA (‘CDVI’) v. Impro Technologies Europe B.V. and Alphatronics B.V., District Court The Hague, The Netherlands, 21 November 2018, Case no. ECLI:NL:RBDHA:2018:13746

CDVI holds EP 1245006 for an electronic card reader. CDVI accuses Impro c.s. to infringe claim 1 of the patent. Impro’s defence is that CDVI’s patent is invalid due to lack of inventive step. Impro also launches an invalidity counter claim.

The Court rules that the patent is not infringed as the patent is not inventive over the state of the art as depicted in figure 1 of the patent combined with common general knowledge. This is confirmed by other earlier patents that provide the same solution for the same problem and thus underline that the solution is part of the common general knowledge of the man skilled in the art.

In the counterclaim, the Court -despite an attempt by CDVI to amend its claims- invalidates the patent.

A copy of the judgment (in Dutch) can be read here.