2025-10-23 - CD Milan - bioMerieux v. Labrador Diagnostics - UPC_CFI_497/2024

1. An assessment based on a maximum of different documents to challenge the novelty and to argue for non-inventiveness is indeed appropriate. The attacks not identified by the party challenging the patent as (most) promising will not be discussed on the merits because, when the party submits a number of attacks that appear to be unmanageable by the Court in accordance with the principles of proportionality (point 3 of the preamble) and speed (point 7 of the preamble), and the same party is unable to re-module some of the attacks in such a way as to allow the Court to organise its time for the efficient management of the proceedings, it must be assumed that if the (most) promising attacks, after assessment of the Court, do not affect the validity of the claim(s), the others wouldn’t have done so either. 2. The agreed amount of the legal costs will not be kept confidential, because that amount does not (simply) say anything about the company's financial capacity, its commercial strategy, or the importance of the patent as a corporate asset."

The Milan Central Division maintained EP 3 756 767 B1 in amended form (Auxiliary Request 3) after finding the Main Request and first two auxiliary requests invalid. The Main Request and AR2 contained added matter (sample unit not claimed as part of device). AR1 lacked novelty over Clark (MEIA cartridge anticipated the second tip). AR3 survived: novel over Clark and VIDAS, inventive over Clark+Coassin, VIDAS+Chapman, and Tsuruta+Tominaga. The court developed an attack management framework under R. 104 RoP requiring ranking of ~50 attacks by likelihood of success.