The Piaggio Group has today confirmed it has won a court case in Italy something which it claims means it is to receive “damages for more than one million euro”.
The case centres around Piaggio’s leaning multi-wheel bikes, and specifically patents relating to the intellectual property rights around the system that allows them to lean in the way that a conventional two-wheeled motorcycle does. Piaggio argued that the system used by Peugeot, in bikes like the Metropolis three-wheeled maxi-scooter, was too similar to that covered by the patent.
The Piaggio MP3 530
Piaggio began the statement by stating that it “continues its fight to protect its products against counterfeiting,” going on to say that the “ruling of the Corte di Cassazione and the consequent definitive finding that a patent owned by Piaggio & C. S.p.A. had been infringed highlights the importance and the value of the technological results achieved by the Piaggio Group with its sizeable R&D investments, which have put the Piaggio Group at the cutting edge of three-wheel vehicle technology and won the Piaggio MP3 a leadership position on the market.”
The Corte di Cassazione is effectively Italy’s supreme court of appeal, and the case was passed to that court by Peugeot Motorcycles Italia which was pushing to have an original ruling overturned. At the time of the original case, brought in September 2021, Peugeot was hit with a reported €1.5 million fine and was ordered to remove the Metropolis from sale in France and Italy within 90 days or risk being fined €6,000 for every machine sold after that cut-off time. At the time of writing the Metropolis is still listed on the Peugeot Motorcycle France website, although not on the Peugeot Italy website.
