LexBerg was instructed in 2021 to defend a Munich-based software company against EU-wide patent infringement proceedings brought by a US-headquartered technology group, which alleged that the client's core data analytics platform infringed three European patents relating to methods of real-time data aggregation and machine learning-based predictive modelling. The US group filed proceedings before Munich Regional Court I (Landgericht München I) — Germany's primary venue for technology patent disputes — and simultaneously sought an injunction that would prevent the client from selling or operating its platform across all EU member states.

The client's platform had been developed entirely in-house over six years and generated approximately €18 million in annual revenue. An adverse injunction would have been commercially catastrophic, and the client held no patent portfolio of its own to use as a defensive counter-measure in licensing negotiations. The proceedings therefore required LexBerg to mount a full technical and legal defence from first principles, including invalidity attacks on all three asserted patents before the Federal Patent Court, alongside a non-infringement defence in the main Munich proceedings.

LexBerg's IP litigation team deployed a defence strategy that ran invalidity challenges to all three patents in parallel with the infringement defence — maximising pressure on the claimant and ensuring that even if the infringement arguments required refinement at trial, the patents themselves would be under sustained legal attack throughout the proceedings.

The defence required simultaneous proceedings before two different German courts, a technically demanding non-infringement analysis, and a contingency design-around to protect the client's business even in a worst-case scenario. LexBerg coordinated all four work-streams in parallel.

• Nullity proceedings were filed against all three patents at the Federal Patent Court, asserting prior art from academic publications, open-source repositories, and two US patents predating the claimant's priority date by more than three years.
• A leading computer science academic was instructed as technical expert, providing a detailed non-infringement analysis demonstrating that the client's architecture used a fundamentally different algorithmic approach that fell outside the scope of each asserted claim.
• The application for a preliminary injunction was successfully opposed at Munich Regional Court I, with the court finding that the balance of hardship and the strength of the invalidity case weighed against granting interim relief before full trial.
• A design-around was developed for the most potentially problematic claim scope, preserving full product functionality while creating a clear engineering record demonstrating operation outside the patent claims.

The Federal Patent Court declared two of the three asserted patents invalid in their entirety on the basis of prior art identified by LexBerg's team. The US claimant abandoned proceedings on the third patent rather than face trial with its two strongest patents eliminated. The injunction application was dismissed in full by Munich Regional Court I. The client's platform has continued to operate without interruption across the EU, and the invalidity declarations — effective across all EPC member states — permanently removed the patent threat from the market. LexBerg's IP team subsequently assisted the client in establishing its own patent filing programme to build a defensive portfolio and reduce vulnerability to future infringement claims.