UPC? So do we.
Neueste Entscheidungen
Alle Entscheidungen- Zte v. Samsung The judge-rapporteur of the Court of Appeal permitted, under R. 265 RoP, the withdrawal of both ZTE's infringement action and Samsung's counterclaim for revocation while ZTE's appeal against the LD Mannheim decision partially revoking the patent was pending. A withdrawal under R. 265.1 RoP is admissible in appeal proceedings as long as no final decision exists, and the Court of Appeal decides on it; consent of the other party excludes any legitimate interest in a decision. No costs decision under R. 265.2(c) RoP was needed because neither party requested one, the oral hearing was cancelled, and 50% of ZTE's appeal court fees were reimbursed under R. 370.9(b) RoP as in force since 1 January 2026, since the withdrawal came before the Statement of response.
- CureVac Manufacturing v. Moderna The judge-rapporteur of the The Hague Local Division confirmed a confidentiality regime the parties agreed after a case management hearing, superseding a provisional grant of Moderna's confidentiality application. The order sets up two tiers: information protected against third parties and the public under R. 262.2 RoP, and 'Manufacturing Process Information' whose access is also restricted on the claimant side under R. 262A RoP to its representatives, external experts on request, and one designated employee each of CureVac SE and BioNTech US, who must not be involved in mRNA manufacturing patent filings. The protected passages are excluded from R. 262.1(b) inspection, only a fully redacted Statement of Defence is available to third parties, the public is excluded from the oral hearing insofar as the information is discussed, and breaches may attract penalty payments. The Court also granted an agreed extension of the claimant's next deadline to 23 November 2026, with all later deadlines moving accordingly.
- Pirelli Tyre v. Sichuan Yuanxing Rubber The judge-rapporteur of the Milan Local Division permitted Pirelli to withdraw, under R. 265 RoP, its R. 150 RoP application for the determination of the costs of earlier provisional and merits proceedings against Sichuan Yuanxing, which had been stayed under R. 295(d) RoP while the parties finalised a settlement. The defendant raised no objection, and the Court found no interest of the defendant that would justify a decision on the merits of the cost application. The proceedings were declared closed and no decision on the costs of the withdrawal proceedings was required, consistent with the withdrawing party's declaration that costs be borne by each side.
- GlaxoSmithKline v. Pfizer et al. The The Hague Local Division held GSK's patent on liposomes for RNA delivery valid except for claim 13 and infringed by Pfizer and BioNTech's Comirnaty vaccines, granting an injunction for all EPC states except Ireland and the UK. On claim construction, a claimed numerical range tied to a measurement method in the description includes the method's stated imprecision; on priority, the Court applied partial priority under G 1/15 so that an application with the same effective date was not prior art under Art. 54(3) EPC. On inventive step, it adopted a restrictive concept of common general knowledge: information qualifies only if it is so elementary, convincing and consensual that the skilled person necessarily knows it, which a single recent review or patent publication cannot establish; claim 13, a medical-use claim, was insufficient because a protective immune response was not credible across the claimed breadth of RNA. On jurisdiction, defendants domiciled in UPC territory are subject to universal jurisdiction under Art. 4 Brussels I, and centrally coordinated group entities serve as anchor defendants under Art. 8(1) Brussels I for the other EU, Lugano and US defendants; the integrated group structure made all defendants joint infringers, and the injunction for non-UPC EU and Lugano states issued under the condition subsequent set by the CoA in Fujifilm v Kodak. Applying proportionality, the Court granted the injunction as the rule but deferred its enforceability until a final decision plus three months to obtain a licence, as the non-practising patentee itself requested.
- Digital River Ireland et al. v. Ericsson The Milan Local Division revoked Ericsson's HEVC-related patent in its entirety on the counterclaim and dismissed the infringement action against ASUSTeK and Arvato. A limitation introduced during prosecution, restricting the claimed method to a current picture in a layer other than the highest decoded layer, was not directly and unambiguously disclosed in the parent application: the application disclosed applying the method to any picture, but did not individualise this subgroup, so the claims extended beyond the earlier application (Art. 76(1), Art. 138(1)(c) EPC). For the same reason the claims were not entitled to priority, so the April 2013 HEVC standard became prior art and anticipated them. The Court also held that a JCT-VC draft uploaded to the standardisation body's document server was publicly available, and refused the single auxiliary request because deleting the limitation extended the scope of protection (Art. 123(3) EPC) and the replacement wording was unclear (Art. 84 EPC).
- STADA v. Merz et al. A third party, STADAPHARM, asked the Court of Appeal under R. 262.1(b) RoP for access to all written pleadings and evidence in the concluded provisional-measures appeal UPC_CoA_917/2025 between Merz and Viatris, in the alternative to 17 listed pleadings with their exhibits, and in the further alternative to those pleadings without exhibits. The judge-rapporteur of Panel 2 did not decide the request. She ordered that the parties to the main proceedings be given the opportunity to comment pursuant to R. 262.1(b) RoP and set a deadline of 19 November 2026. The order is a case-management step that precedes the decision on access.
- Centripetal v. Palo Alto Networks The Mannheim Local Division (Tochtermann as presiding judge and judge-rapporteur) ordered, on the joint request of the parties, that the security of EUR 100,000 held by the Court be released directly to the defendant in partial satisfaction of its cost claims under the cost orders in the related cost proceedings. The applicant owed EUR 166,809, so a balance of EUR 66,809 remained payable between the parties. The defendant agreed to the transfer in writing, and the order gives no further reasoning and names no provision. In the earlier orders of this docket the security of EUR 100,000 was the condition for the effect of the saisie order, which was later revoked.
- Zte v. Samsung The Mannheim Local Division, through the judge-rapporteur, permitted under R. 265 RoP the withdrawal of both the infringement action and the counterclaim for revocation, on the parties' mutual agreement during the interim procedure, and declared both proceedings closed. Following two Court of Appeal orders, it held that no decision on costs is required where the actions are withdrawn in their entirety and all parties declare that they request none. It confirmed the value in dispute of EUR 8,000,000 for each proceeding, as stated in its order of 21 October 2026. No party asked for reimbursement of court fees, so the decision makes no ruling on it.
- Samsung v. Zte The Mannheim LD, by the judge-rapporteur, permitted under R. 265 RoP the mutually agreed withdrawal of an infringement action and of the joint counterclaim for revocation, and declared both proceedings closed. No decision on costs was required because both actions were withdrawn in their entirety and all parties declared that none was requested. The claimant's request for proportional reimbursement of court fees under R. 370.9(c)(ii) RoP was rejected: the version of R. 370.9 RoP in force since 1 January 2026 applied because the R. 265 application was filed after that date, the action was not withdrawn before the closure of the written procedure (R. 370.9(b) RoP), and the claimant did not put forward that the requirements of R. 370.9(c) RoP were met. The Court confirmed the value in dispute of EUR 4,000,000 set in its order of 28 May 2025 and applied the same value to the counterclaim.
- Samsung v. Zte The Mannheim Local Division, through the judge-rapporteur, permitted under R. 265 RoP the withdrawal of both the infringement action and the counterclaim for revocation on the parties' mutual agreement, and held no cost decision required because none was requested. It rejected the claimant's request for a 20% reimbursement of court fees. R. 370.9 RoP in the version in force since 1 January 2026 governed, because the R. 265 application was filed after that date, although the action itself dates from 2025. Under that version the request was unfounded: the action was not withdrawn before the closure of the written procedure (R. 370.9(b) RoP), and nothing was put forward to meet R. 370.9(c) RoP.
- Digital River Ireland et al. v. Ericsson The Milan Local Division maintained Ericsson's HEVC patent against novelty and inventive-step attacks and found that ASUSTeK indirectly infringed it by selling computers whose processors provide dedicated HEVC hardware decoding, while direct infringement failed because users must install additional software. The Court held that it has no jurisdiction to declare a patent standard-essential as a principal finding with erga omnes effect, only incidentally to an infringement claim, and that it is competent over a logistics intermediary under Art. 33(1)(a) UPCA by reference to the principal infringement in Italy. On the FRAND defence it defined the relevant market as the licensing of the individual SEP's technology, found Ericsson dominant on the facts without any presumption, and held that Ericsson breached the first Huawei v ZTE step by giving no infringement notice before filing suit, which a conditional injunction request cannot cure. The well-founded FRAND defence barred the injunction, recall and destruction, but not a declaration of infringement, liability for damages in principle, or an information order, which also reaches the intermediary.
- Fraunhofer-Gesellschaft zur Förderung der angewandten Forschung v. Acer et al. The judge-rapporteur of the Hamburg Local Division rejected the defendants' request under R. 334(b) RoP to adjourn the scheduled oral hearing in an infringement action on a patent licensed through the Vectis Opus pool, and their alternative request for a split hearing on the FRAND defence. Adjournment is a discretionary case management decision weighing the aims of the UPCA and the RoP, including the one-year target for the oral hearing in Preamble No. 7 RoP, against the parties' interests. A rate-setting counterclaim brought against the pool administrator in separate proceedings before the LD The Hague by a different pool contributor's opponents is not prejudicial, because the parties are not identical; each panel must examine the FRAND defence before it on its own, and decisions in parallel FRAND proceedings are of mutual factual interest only. Any hardship from an injunction can be met by a period for enforceability under R. 352 RoP or a request for suspensive effect on appeal.