The ruling by the District Court of The Hague last week follows a hearing held on December 12 last year.
Patrick White, chief executive of
Document Security Systems
(DSS), said that the decision "clears the path for infringement proceedings to begin in the Netherlands". He added that the company would now seek monetary damages from printers and other third parties, including those who print bank notes in other European countries that are used in the Netherlands.
He continued: "We fully believe that the ECB will appeal this decision, but we do not expect that this likely appeal will impact our ability to move forward with infringement proceedings on our timeline."
DSS originally
sued
the European Central Bank in August 2005 at the European Court of First Instance, alleging that the euro banknotes produced by the ECB infringe its European patent (0455750B1) relating to anti-counterfeiting technology.
But it suffered a setback last September when the CFI declined to accept jurisdiction in the patent case. The Bank subsequently filed a series of lawsuits in national courts in the Netherlands, Germany, Austria, Italy, Spain, Belgium, the UK, Luxembourg and France seeking to cancel DSS's patent.
On March 26 this year, the English High Court ruled that the patent was invalid, just a day before the German Federal Patent Court
upheld
its validity. The patent has since been invalidated in France and now, in the latest twist, it has been upheld by the Dutch courts.
In November 2006, DSS
disclosed
that McDermott Will & Emery would accept up to $1.2 million of the company's common stock as payment for outstanding and future fees. Any legal services provided over the 1.2 million cap will not be charged.
It is unusual for firms in Europe to accept equity in lieu of fees for legal work.
The European Central Bank is one of an increasing number of banks and financial institutions that have found themselves on the end of patent litigation lawsuits, particularly from so-called patent trolls.
