2026-04-17 - CoA - Abbott v. Menarini et al. - UPC-COA-0000901/2025

ENGLISH: "1. A claim feature should not be excluded from the assessment of inventive step merely because it is a non-technical feature, i.e. a feature which, on its own, would be considered a “non-invention” under Art. 52(2) EPC. A feature that is non-technical as such may still contribute to the technical character of the claimed invention as a whole by its interaction with the other claim features. Therefore, the interrelationship and functioning of the claim features must be assessed together. 2. Pursuant to R. 220.1 RoP, only a party adversely affected by a decision may lodge an appeal. The same applies to a cross-appeal pursuant to R. 237 RoP. A cross-appeal is inadmissible if the only purpose of the cross-appeal is to change (a certain part of) the reasoning of the Court in First Instance, which in its result is in favour of the party filing the cross-appeal. "

The Court of Appeal set aside the LD The Hague's refusal of a preliminary injunction and granted provisional measures against Sinocare and Menarini over indirect infringement of Abbott's glucose-monitoring patent. On claim construction, the CoA held that event data icons on a timeline graph need not be located on or near the graph line — mere time-axis correlation suffices, reversing the LD's narrower reading. On inventive step, the CoA articulated a headnote principle that a non-technical feature may still contribute to the technical character of the claimed invention as a whole through interaction with other features, following EPO G1/19 and COMVIK (T 641/00). Finally, the CoA declared the respondents' cross-appeal inadmissible under R. 220.1 and R. 237 RoP, since its sole purpose was to revise reasoning that already favoured the cross-appellants in the result.