Legal Proceeding

Resolved Legal Matter

In 2018, Havkraft AS was summoned to Oslo District Court with a claim to transfer a patent. The judgment was handed down on 2019.01.14 and the case has been legally decided. The case concerned a claim for the transfer of a patent applied for in Havkraft AS (the «Dispute Patent»). The court found that the invention underlying the patent did not meet the requirement for novelty and was thus not a patentable invention when the Dispute Patent was granted. The technology was made widely available – both through a physical test facility in Refvik and through documentation using videos that were shown during the international wave conference in Aalborg in 2000.  On this basis, the court concluded that a professional with general knowledge of wave power technology would have understood the technology by observing the test facility at Refvik alone or by watching the videos that were publicly available.  Havkraft AS was acquitted of the claim for transfer of the Dispute Patent as the invention did not meet the novelty requirement. Havkraft AS was also acquitted of the claim for damages, referring to the fact that the technology behind the invention was publicly available and thus not protected as a trade secret. The court states: «As long as the HSPS technology was not protected as a trade secret, C had to be able to make use of the knowledge he had acquired about it after D passed away. Furthermore, the court writes that «As stated above, this was a technology that, in the court’s view, was not patentable, but on the basis of which C was nevertheless granted the patent in dispute. A possible consequence of this is that the patent may be declared invalid». The same year as the judgment was handed down, Havkraft AS decided not to continue the Strid patent and the patent expired in 2019. This is not a technology that has been continued by Havkraft AS today and is not covered by Havkraft’s patent portfolio. The verdict and more information about the case can be found here.