KeeeX patent case against Adobe and OpenAI reaches a Paris hearing

On the morning of 6 October 2026, the Paris local division of the Unified Patent Court began hearing a case on the merits between patent holder KeeeX and several defendants, JUVE Patent reported that day. JUVE does not give a date for a judgment. MLex headlined the dispute “OpenAI, Adobe clash with KeeeX over digital provenance patent”.

KeeeX filed the infringement action on 17 June 2025. JUVE names the defendants as Adobe and OpenAI entities, Truepic, the Joint Development Foundation, and the Coalition for Content Provenance and Authenticity, or C2PA. The defendants filed counterclaims for revocation. JUVE lists the infringement case as UPC_CFI_530/2025 and gives separate case IDs for the counterclaims. The hearing is in French. Presiding judge and judge-rapporteur Camille Lignières sits with legally qualified judges Carine Gillet and Peter Tochtermann and technically qualified judge Alessandro Sanchini.

What the patent is said to cover

The patent is EP 2 949 070. JUVE says KeeeX holds it, and describes it as a method for verifying the integrity and authenticity of digital data blocks: in short, whether digital content is unchanged in the relevant respect and can be checked. Google Patents shows the English title as “Verification process of the integrity of numerical data bloc,” and lists the current assignee as Aix Marseille Universite and the CNRS, inventor Laurent Henocque.

KeeeX alleges that the defendants use patented features in digital tools for checking or processing content. The defendants dispute what claim 1 means by “digital identification fingerprint.” JUVE says KeeeX distinguishes that term from a digital signature, while the defendants argue for a broader reading. They also dispute “digital data block,” how the fingerprint is calculated, and how linked blocks are checked. On validity, JUVE says the defendants cite, among other things, KANAI, OpenPGP and the PDF standard. KeeeX defends the patent as granted and has filed amended claim sets in the alternative. A 22 September 2026 order, JUVE says, left those issues for the merits.

The money, as claims

JUVE reports the damages as claims, not as an award. KeeeX initially sought EUR 5.6 billion for material damage and EUR 1 billion for non-material damage. Any final damages calculation, if one is needed, is for separate proceedings. In the current proceedings the patent holder seeks EUR 100 million plus EUR 20 million in interim damages. JUVE says the Paris division let that claim proceed as a procedural matter, and that in the summer the Court of Appeal rejected Adobe’s request for discretionary review.

Earlier this year, JUVE says, the Court of Appeal held that the UPC does not have jurisdiction to decide the alleged infringement of the Swiss, Spanish, British, Irish, Norwegian and Polish parts of the patent. Separately, JUVE says Adobe alone has filed a nullity action at the German Federal Patent Court, case 6 Ni 61/25.

Why a provenance label is in a patent court

C2PA says it provides an open technical standard for publishers, creators and consumers to establish the origin and edits of digital content. It calls that standard Content Credentials, and compares it to a nutrition label for a file: a history someone can inspect. KeeeX’s allegation is that tools of that kind use features of its patent. The defendants’ counterclaim asks the court to revoke the patent. Neither outcome is known from the report of a hearing that had just started.

A watermark check is a different mechanism. Google’s public SynthID detector looks for a hidden mark. Content Credentials are a record attached to the file. People shipping either kind of label now have a European patent case sitting on the second one, with the infringement claim and the revocation counterclaim both still open.