2026-08-19 - CoA - Hartmann Packaging v. Omni-Pac - UPC-COA-0000908/2025

The Court of Appeal decided three appeals against one Düsseldorf Local Division decision on an infringement action and the counterclaim for revocation of a patent for a moulded-fibre egg package. On procedure it confirmed that R. 222.2 RoP governs requests, facts and evidence and not legal arguments, so a new legal argument resting on first-instance facts is admissible while newly filed annexes were refused, and it held part of the patentee's appeal inadmissible because it rested on blanket references to first-instance submissions the impugned decision had addressed. On construction it read the disputed feature as excluding the traditional flexible locking flap, relying on the way the specification distinguishes itself from the prior art it describes, and expressly declined the first instance's rigidity-based reasoning because the patent discloses no rigidity requirement; the distinction it drew instead is where the nose sits and whether the part carrying it must flex to release, which the patentee accepted at the oral hearing. On validity it confirmed that choosing pulp from the small set of materials known for egg packaging is obvious over a starting point that leaves the material open, additionally revoked the method claim as granted for lack of inventive step because the missing manufacturing step would follow from routine testing, and maintained both independent claims in the amended form of auxiliary request 2. Infringement failed on the construction adopted, and the partial success on appeal was held too minor to disturb the first-instance cost allocation.