2023-10-10 - LD Vienna - Cup Cino Kaffeesystem Vertrieb v. Alpina Coffee Systems - UPC_CFI_182/2023

Was ist diese UPC-Entscheidung?

Zusammenfassung: One of the Unified Patent Court's earliest reasoned provisional-measures decisions, delivered with an official headnote. The Vienna Local Division held first that an application for provisional measures is an 'action' within Rules 5 and 5A RoP and Art. 83(3) UPCA, so the opt-out the applicant lodged ten days after filing was ineffective under Rule 5.6 RoP and the Court's competence — including for a later main action — could no longer be withdrawn. On the merits it set out the claim-construction framework: the scope of a European patent is determined under Art. 69(1) EPC and its Protocol on Interpretation in conjunction with Art. 24(1)(c) UPCA, the description being the starting material for ascertaining the technical teaching and legal certainty requiring that third parties can tell whether an embodiment falls within the claim. Construing the disputed feature, it read the description's length figures for the calming section — 0.5 m to 2 m, preferably about 1.5 m — as a length specification to be used in construing the claim, so a roughly 10 cm elbow connector and coupling part could not be the claimed conduit section; the feature was not realised and there was no infringement. Urgency and the invalidity objections were therefore left undecided. On costs the panel held that because the applicant had failed, the first-instance provisional-measures proceedings were at an end and there was no room for a merely provisional reimbursement: the applicant could not recover these costs as the losing party even if it later won on the merits, so the respondent's EUR 25,600 was awarded definitively.

Quelle und Fundstellen

Quelle: UPC Case File

Aktenzeichen: UPC_CFI_182/2023