Peugeot Motocycles Italia fined a million euros for infringement of Piaggio MP3 patent

An Italian court has ruled that a patent, owned by the Piaggio Group, has been infringed upon by Peugeot Motocycles Italia.

In an official release on June 4, the Piaggio Group has stated 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 January 16, 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.

Piaggio's patent 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.

According to the Piaggio press release, "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 a million euros (Rs 8.78 crore).

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."