On April 30, the UPC’s local division Hamburg ruled that Gucci did not infringe Agfa's patent (EP 3 388 490 B1, a manufacturing method for embellishing natural leather with decorative images), but confirmed that the patent was valid and rejected Gucci's counterclaim for patent invalidity.

       The court determined that Gucci's Pikarar Collection (including handbags, sneakers, etc.) that were accused of infringement did not use the non-black colorless base coating in the patent claims, and therefore did not constitute infringement. The key point of dispute lies in the definition of colorless. According to the patent description, the term requires that the color of the base coating is approximately equally distributed at all wavelengths, and the base coating of Gucci's products shows obvious color difference after spectral analysis, which does not meet this definition. In addition, the prior art documents proposed by Gucci (including US 7,891,799 B2, etc.) failed to undermine the novelty or creativity of the patent in question, so the validity of the patent was maintained.

      Both parties can appeal to the UPC Court of Appeal within 60 days.