Peugeot Motorcycles Italia krijgt een boete van 1 miljoen euro omwille van een copyrightschending. Het merk zou iets teveel afgekeken hebben van de concullega’s bij Piaggio.
Het verhaal begint enkele jaren geleden met de lancering van de Peugeot Metropolis. De Fransen waren immers stikjaloers op het succes dat Piaggio scoorde met de MP3 in Parijs. Ze gingen daarop aan de slag om zelf een driewieler te ontwikkelen met kantelende voorkant, wat uiteindelijk de Peugeot Metropolis zou worden. Piaggio spande gelijk een rechtszaak aan, maar zoals dat bij justitie nogal eens gaat, liet de uitspraak op zich wachten en ging Peugeot bovendien in beroep. Uiteindelijk haalde Piaggio toch haar slag thuis, en moet Peugeot in Italië alvast een flinke boete betalen. Wat dit betekent voor de rest van de wereld is nog een vraagteken, al gokken we dat de scooterafdeling van Peugeot wel eens flink op z’n donder zal krijgen van de hoofdzetel.
| Piaggio Group: infringement of a Piaggio MP3 scooter patent, Peugeot Motorcycles Italia sentenced to pay damages for more than one million euro |
| The Piaggio Group continues its fight to protect its products against counterfeiting Milan, 04 June 2024 – The Piaggio Group (PIA.MI) said that the Corte di Cassazione, Italy’s supreme court of appeal, had dismissed as inadmissible the appeal filed by Peugeot Motocycles SAS and Peugeot Motocycles Italia against the ruling of the Milan Court of Appeal of 16 January 2023, which upheld the first-instance judgement of the Court of Milan that, with the Peugeot Metropolis, the Peugeot entities had infringed the Italian portion of a Piaggio & C. S.p.A. European patent.The patent owned by Piaggio & C. S.p.A. specifically relates to the control system that enables a three-wheel vehicle to tilt sideways like a conventional motorcycle. The Corte di Cassazione did not issue a ruling on the merits of the appeal lodged by Peugeot Motocycles SAS and Peugeot Motocycles Italia – which raised six pleas – but dismissed it as inadmissible, given that the appellants had requested (new) investigations, which the supreme court is precluded from conducting, and had raised objections to alleged defects in the grounds of the ruling of the court of appeal, which the supreme court considered to be imprecise and non-specific. The pronouncement of the final court of appeal confirms the previous ruling of the Court of Appeal of Milan and so definitively establishes that the Italian portion of the Piaggio & C. S.p.A. European patent was infringed, the injunction, against Peugeot Motocycles Italia, in the Italian territory, of the import, export, marketing and advertising (also on the internet) of the Peugeot Metropolis, and that Piaggio & C. S.p.A. is entitled to receive damages. With its subsequent sentence (on which the appeal before the supreme court is still pending), the Milan Court of Appeal quantified the damages that Peugeot Motocycles Italia will be required to pay to Piaggio & C. S.p.A. as result of the ascertained infringement at more than 1 million euro. * * *The ruling of the Corte di Cassazione and the consequent definitive finding that a patent owned by Piaggio & C. S.p.A. had been infringed highlights the importance and the value of the technological results achieved by the Piaggio Group with its sizeable R&D investments, which have put the Piaggio Group at the cutting edge of three-wheel vehicle technology and won the Piaggio MP3 a leadership position on the market. |