We know the Piaggio group's appetite for filing patents, and even in our section MotoGP the Italian firm has already appeared several times (see here) while none of them can concern the royalty-free domain of competition, and today Peugeot is paying the price.
But when it comes to models approved for the road, and the resulting financial consequences, we no longer laugh and the men of Pontedera no longer joke! The case obviously concerns the MP3, spearhead of Italian scooters, whose control system which allows a three-wheeled vehicle to tilt sideways like a conventional motorcycle was copied by Peugeot for its Metropolis.
Trial, appeal, cassation, the story has just reached its conclusion, at least on Italian soil, with a sentence of more than a million euros for the French surname.
Here is a translation of the press release published by the Piaggio group.
Piaggio Group: infringement of a patent for the Piaggio MP3 scooter, Peugeot Motorcycles Italia sentenced to more than one million euros in damages
The Piaggio Group continues its fight to protect its products against counterfeiting
Milan, June 04, 2024 – The Piaggio Group (PIA.MI) announces that the Corte di Cassazione, the Italian Supreme Court of Appeal, has rejected as inadmissible the appeal filed by Peugeot Motocycles SAS and Peugeot Motocycles Italia against the judgment of the Court of Appeal of Milan on January 16, 2023, which confirmed the first instance judgment of the Court of Milan according to which, with the Peugeot Metropolis, the Peugeot entities had infringed the Italian part of a European patent of Piaggio & CSpA.
The patent held by Piaggio & CSpA specifically relates to the control system that allows a three-wheeled vehicle to tilt sideways like a conventional motorcycle.
The Corte di Cassazione did not rule on the merits of the appeal filed by Peugeot Motocycles SAS and Peugeot Motocycles Italia – which raised six grounds – but rejected it as inadmissible, given that the applicants had requested (further) investigations, which the Supreme Court cannot do, and that they had raised objections to alleged flaws in the reasons for the Court of Appeal's judgment, which the Supreme Court considered imprecise and non-specific.
The judgment of the Court of Cassation confirms the previous judgment of the Court of Appeal of Milan and thus definitively establishes the infringement of the Italian part of the European patent of Piaggio & CSpA, the prohibition, against Peugeot Motocycles Italia, in Italian territory, from the import, export, marketing and advertising (including on the Internet) of the Peugeot Metropolis, and the right of Piaggio & CSpA to receive damages.
In its subsequent judgment (which is still the subject of an appeal before the Supreme Court), the Court of Appeal of Milan estimated at more than one million euros the damages that Peugeot Motocycles Italia will have to pay to Piaggio & CSpA due to the infringement noted.
* * *
The judgment of the Corte di Cassazione and the definitive finding of the infringement of a patent belonging to Piaggio & CSpA underline the importance and value of the technological results obtained by the Piaggio group thanks to its significant investments in R&D, which have placed the Piaggio Group at the forefront of three-wheel vehicle technology and have enabled the Piaggio MP3 to occupy a leading position in the market.
