EPLAW PATENT BLOG

NL – SEAB Power LTD v. The Waste Transformers

Posted: September 8th, 2022

SEaB Power Ltd v. The Waste Transformers Nederland B.V. et al., summary proceedings District Court The Hague, The Netherlands, 12 July 2022, (joint) Case No. ECLI:NL:RBDHA:2022:6786

SEaB holds patents EP ‘589 and EP 420 relating to portable devices for anaerobic digestion of waste. SeAB requests exhibition of certain evidence, in order to substantiate an infringement claim. The Judge rules that in order to allow such claim a legal relationship needs to exist between the parties. Such legal relationship may consist of patent infringement.

However, the preliminary relief Judge comes to the conlusion that The Waste Transformers do not infringe and that the requested access to evidence can not change that conclusion.

After all, in the Waste Transformers systems, mesophilic digestion takes place first and only then it is pasteurized. The fact that after pasteurization waste water can be returned to the mixing tank does not mean that there is also a route in which pasteurization is first performed, followed by mesophilic is digestion.

This means that the inspection requested by SEaB, which is aimed at finding evidence that there may also be other smaller tanks in which pasteurization or thermophilic anaerobic digestion may take place (so that characteristic iii of both claim 1 of EP 589 and claim 1 of EP 420 is met), is no longer relevant. That evidence – if provided – cannot mean that there is an infringement.

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

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