2026-08-28 - CoA - Hurom v. NUC Electronics et al. - UPC_CoA_678/2025

(i) The review of the admissibility of an Application to amend a patent under R. 30.1 RoP shall be limited to the assessment as to whether the applicant to the amendment has actually filed an explanation regarding the requirements of Art. 84 and 123(2), (3) EPC, and not whether said explanation is sufficiently convincing in view of the assessment of the validity of the patent in its amended form, which remains to be decided when assessing said validity on the merits rather than when assessing the admissibility of such an Application. (ii) As a general rule, in case of claim amendments, the entire patent description which remains unamended may be used as explanatory aid for the interpretation of a patent claim. (iii) It is for the party relying on facts to prove those facts and to provide evidence that the disputed acts would amount to acts of infringement under the applicable law when assessing whether the part of a European patent outside the territories of UPCA Contracting Member States is likely infringed.

The Court of Appeal upheld the revocation of the Dutch, French, German and Italian parts of a patent for lack of inventive step and the dismissal of the infringement action that followed from it. It set the standard of review for an application to amend a patent under R. 30.1 RoP: admissibility asks only whether the proprietor actually filed an explanation on Art. 84 and 123(2), (3) EPC, and whether that explanation convinces belongs to the assessment of validity on the merits. On claim construction the Court held that where the claims are amended and the description is not, the unamended description may still serve as an explanatory aid, and that a feature must not be reduced to an embodiment of the specification. On the part of the patent outside the UPCA Contracting Member States the Court confirmed that it has jurisdiction over infringement in Poland under Art. 31 UPCA with Art. 4 and 8 Brussels Ia, notwithstanding the exclusive jurisdiction over validity in Art. 24(4) Brussels Ia, but dismissed the claim because the claimant proved neither the facts nor that those facts amount to infringement under Polish law, which Rome II and Art. 24(2)(a) UPCA make applicable.