Unified Patent Court finds infringement of a transitory signal claim

It is common practice for a category of US patent claims to be directed toward “non-transitory” media. European patent practice, in contrast, permits claiming patent protection for transitory media such as an electronic signal. 

This practice has now been confirmed by the UPC in the dispute between Interdigital v Disney. Interdigital filed an infringement suit before the Mannheim Local Divison against various subsidiaries of Disney for infringement of Interdigital’s patent EP2465265 related to methods and apparatus for improved intra chroma encoding and decoding. Notably, Disney were found to infringe both method claim 1 of EP2465265 related to a method of encoding for a video encoder, and corresponding product claim 15 directed to a “signal comprising video data…”.

While the consequences of having a claim to a signal did not substantially change the damages and relief obtained by Interdigital in consequence of the court having found infringement, as the court found the encoded signal was a product directly obtained by the encoding method of claim 1, it does demonstrate the advantageous nature of claims that encompass transitory signal states, thereby going beyond the usual “non-transitory storage medium” claim wording. This does necessitate that an application as originally filed does provide support for such broader claim wording. 

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