Short Summary
Irdeto B.V. brought an infringement action against DJI Europe B.V., DJI GmbH, and Solectric GmbH alleging that DJI drones and their controllers infringed EP 2 831 787 B1, which relates to methods for preventing security threats on electronic devices. The defendants counterclaimed for revocation of the patent. The Local Division Mannheim dismissed both the infringement action and the counterclaim for revocation, ordering each party to bear their own costs.
Detailed Summary
This case before the Local Division Mannheim of the Unified Patent Court concerned European Patent EP 2 831 787 B1, owned by Irdeto B.V., a Dutch software security and media technology company. The patent relates to a method and system for preventing and detecting security threats to an operating system and certified applications on an electronic device, involving a secured software agent embedded within an abstraction layer that intercepts system calls and validates requests against secured data storage. The patent application was filed on 30 March 2012 and granted on 8 July 2020, with no opposition filed. The patent was initially opted out of the UPC's exclusive jurisdiction on 20 March 2024, but the opt-out was withdrawn on 10 April 2025.
The defendants belong to or are associated with the DJI Group, which sells commercial drones worldwide. DJI Europe B.V. is a Dutch reseller, DJI GmbH is a German company owned by DJI Europe B.V., and Solectric GmbH operates the DJI webstore (www.djistore.de) and DJI flagship stores in Germany and Austria. On 15 April 2025, Irdeto initiated an infringement action against these three defendants and SZ DJI Technology Co. Ltd. (based in China), alleging direct and indirect infringement through the distribution of DJI drones and controllers running Linux/Android operating systems with SELinux and dm-verity security modules. The proceedings against SZ DJI Technology Co. were later separated. The defendants filed a counterclaim for revocation on 14 August 2025. Irdeto's conditional applications to amend the patent were found inadmissible.
Regarding the infringement action, the court found that Irdeto had failed to substantiate that the attacked embodiments (DJI drones and controllers) actually make use of the claimed methods or systems. The court noted that the evidence presented, including a technical opinion, dealt with SELinux and dm-verity only in a general manner and did not relate to the specific implementation in the attacked embodiments. Consequently, the infringement action was dismissed.
Regarding the counterclaim for revocation, the defendants failed to prove that the patent was invalid. The court dismissed the counterclaim.
On costs, the parties had agreed to a 'flat amount' arrangement based on a win/loss ratio. While the defendants were unsuccessful in the counterclaim (valued at EUR 2,000,000) and Irdeto was unsuccessful in the infringement action (valued at EUR 1,000,000), the court found that the higher value of the counterclaim was mainly due to the patent's value in other ongoing proceedings. The court ordered each party to bear their own costs, finding no reason for an interim award on costs.
Practitioner Note
This case demonstrates the evidentiary and procedural standards applied in patent matters before local courts. Understanding the court's reasoning in Irdeto B.V. vs DJI Europe B.V., DJI GmbH, Solectric GmbH is valuable context for structuring arguments or assessing risk in similar proceedings.
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