Subsonic wins against Sony

JUVE Patent, the German publication that has become a leading authority in the legal press and specializes in European patent law, reports in an article on Subsonic’s victory in the patent infringement dispute between Subsonic and Sony.

Since 2014 the parties have been locked in a fierce battle over three patents, EP 0 867 212, EP 08 34 338 and EP 13 31 974. They cover controllers for the popular Sony PlayStation games console. All three patents have long expired: EP 212 and EP 338 in 2017, with EP 974 expiring in 2020.
In late 2016, Sony undertook a product seizure at Subsonic’s headquarters in France and subsequently filed a lawsuit, accusing its French competitor of infringing several features of Sony’s three patents with its controllers.

In 2020 the Judicial Court Paris dismissed the infringement action. The judges claimed that the plaintiff could not prove it was the official patent owner at the time it filed the suit.

The court’s decision was based on the formalities of registration in the National Patent Register as maintained by the INPI. The transfer of the patents in question took place on 13 August 2018 — over 18 months after the court heard the infringement action. As long as Sony had not entered the transfer of the IP rights into the register, the court concluded that the infringement action was inadmissible. Sony filed an appeal, which the Court of Appeal dismissed in 2022 (case ID: 20/12901).

Sony appealed the decision to the Supreme Court. In April 2024, the French Supreme Court overturned the Court of Appeal’s decision. According to the Cour de Cassation in Paris, “From the registration in the register of the transfer of ownership of the patent, the successor in title is entitled to bring an action for infringement for the purpose of obtaining compensation for the damage caused to them by the acts committed since the transfer as well as, if the act transferring the rights specifies it, for the damage caused to them by the acts committed before the transfer.”

The case was remitted to the Court of Appeal, which in a recent ruling held that Sony was procedurally entitled to sue and that the patents themselves were valid. However, the court found that Sony failed to prove infringement. At the same time the court also dismissed a claim by Sony France of unfair competition (case ID: 24/11672). An appeal against this decision to the Supreme court is possible.

This victory once again demonstrates the Plasseraud IP Group’s exceptional ability to support our clients by combining the expertise of our lawyer and patent attorney.

Jean-Christophe Guerrini, Partner and Attorney at Plasseraud IP Avocats, and Raphaël Fleurance, Partner, French & European Patent Attorney, and Head of the Lyon office, assisted Subsonic throughout every stage of this litigation.

Read the article by Konstanze Richter: Game over: Subsonic prevails against Sony in infringement case over PlayStation controllers