Philips, Heineken and InBev announce settlement of patent litigation relating to home beer draught system

It may just be an indication as to how fierce the battle for market share has become in Western Europe’s saturated beer markets that Heineken had taken InBev to court claiming they had violated Heineken’s patent on its home draught beer system. In January the case was settled.

Terms of the agreement have not been disclosed. But all parties involved – Heineken, InBev and Dutch brown goods manufacturer Philips - said that their differences have been resolved in a mutually acceptable manner and as a result, all pending litigations between the parties have been stopped with immediate effect.

It was in September 2005 that Heineken sued InBev and Philips, claiming that their PerfectDraft system violated a patent related to the Beertender home-draught system which Heineken had jointly developed with German electronic appliances manufacturer Krups. However in December of 2005, a Dutch court in a preliminary ruling decided to reject a request by Heineken for a ban on the sale of the competing draught system in The Netherlands. Despite the fact that InBev was allowed to continue to market its PerfectDraft system, Heineken chose to continue its legal battle in a separate court case which has now been terminated.

The Heineken Beertender was introduced in The Netherlands in 2004. According to reports in the local media, up until the end of September 2006, around 190 000 appliances, and around 6 million kegs have been sold in The Netherlands. Heineken also sells the product in Austria, Switzerland, France, Hungary and Bulgaria but hasn’t disclosed sales numbers in those countries.

Likewise InBev declined to disclose sales figures of its own home beer tap system.