AIM Sport Development AG v TGI Sport Suomi Oy, TGI Sport Virtual Limited, TGI SPORT FRANCE SASU, TGI Sport Italia S.r.l., TGI SPORT MARKETING ESPAÑA, S.L., TGI Sport Virtual UK Limited
UPC_CFI_214/2023 and UPC_CFI_403/2025, decision of 29 April 20261
In a decision of 29 April 2026, the Helsinki Local Division held that AIM’s patent, directed to technology for use in TV advertising, was valid but not infringed by TGI. In the absence of Court of Appeal (CoA) case law on infringement by equivalence, the court considered it appropriate to adopt the four-step test from earlier Court of First Instance (CFI) case law relied on by both parties.
This decision was the latest episode of a long-running saga (previously reported here and here) between AIM and TGI dating back to an action lodged in July 2023, just one month after the inauguration of the UPC. After several orders on jurisdiction, including by the CoA, this dispute was back at the CFI for a substantive decision on validity and infringement. The sole claim asserted was method claim 12.
The patent at issue, EP 3295663, relates to technology for dynamically altering billboard advertising in TV broadcasts, such that different content is shown to broadcast viewers compared with in-stadium spectators. The key technical issue concerned how occluding objects (such as players) are identified so that overlaid content is not applied unrealistically.
Where the prior art relied on signatures associated with the billboard itself, the patent instead focused on identifying occluding objects based on “image properties” of those objects.
The court held the asserted claim to be novel over each of the cited documents.
In the discussion of inventive step, the defendants ran a “squeeze” argument: they argued that the teaching of their system was disclosed in one of the cited prior art documents (a previous patent application of the defendants). If the patent covered the defendants’ system, then, the patent would be invalid, but if the patent were valid, then the defendants’ system would not be covered by the claims and there would be no infringement.
In its evaluation of inventive step, the court arrived at a narrow interpretation of “image property” as only relating to “intrinsic” properties of the object, rather than properties such as brightness, which might depend on environmental conditions.
The court considered that the prior art would have directed the skilled person towards improving the signatures associated with the billboard itself, rather than focusing on intrinsic properties of the occluding objects. On that basis, the claimed approach was found to involve an inventive step.
There is no provision in the UPC Agreement on infringement by equivalence, nor any CoA case law, so it was not clear on what basis the court should assess the parties’ submissions. Both the claimant and defendant submitted arguments based on the four-step, cumulative test set out in the decision of the LD The Hague Plant-e v Arkyne (reported here).2 The test is as follows:
The court determined that, given the agreement of the two parties and for the sake of legal certainty, there was no compelling reason not to rely on the cumulative test. This was despite other CFI decisions3 declining to adopt the four-step test.
In its application of the test, the court held that the patent was not infringed by equivalence for essentially the same reason as they held the patent involved an inventive step: because the patent was directed to features of the occluding object, rather than a signature of the billboard, the defendants’ system was found not to be technically equivalent to the features of the claim at issue. Indeed, the claimant’s assertion that an advantage of the invention is being able to work with non-specialised billboards rather than billboards with a special signature ended up working against them, as this led to the court considering that the context addressed by the claim features was different from that of the allegedly infringing device, which contributed to the finding of no technical equivalence.
There was therefore no infringement found, either literally or by equivalence.
Given the finding of lack of technical equivalence, it is likely that the outcome on infringement by equivalence was not dependent upon any specific test adopted, but would have applied on any test that might have been used. However, it is notable that when the parties aligned on a legal test to adopt (in the absence of consideration of the question by the Court of Appeal), the UPC was inclined to follow the parties’ request.
The patent at issue has also previously been the subject of litigation in the national courts of the UK and Germany. The claimant and defendants are able to lodge an appeal within two months of notification of the decision on infringement and validity respectively, so given the apparent commercial importance of the patent, this long-running dispute may yet continue.
[1] https://www.unifiedpatentcourt.org/en/node/183157
[2] https://www.unifiedpatentcourt.org/en/node/1268
[3] For instance, https://www.unifiedpatentcourt.org/en/node/161826