2026-07-31 - LD Mannheim - Owim et al. v. Lidl et al. - UPC_CFI_841/2025

Was ist diese UPC-Entscheidung?

Zusammenfassung: The Mannheim Local Division maintained EP 2 318 184 as granted, dismissed the counterclaim for revocation and found literal infringement of a two-speed hand-tool gearbox, granting an injunction, recall, destruction, an information and accounting order and a declaration of liability in damages for Germany against all four Lidl-group defendants and for France against two of them. Applying the Court of Appeal's Fujifilm v Kodak framework of 2 June 2026, it confirmed long-arm jurisdiction over the United Kingdom designation but dismissed the United Kingdom claim on the merits: a party invoking the law of a non-UPC state must not merely produce the applicable provisions but explain in sufficient detail how those provisions and the relevant case-law apply to the situation, and this claimant had produced the provisions and stopped there. On jurisdiction it also held, following BSH Hausgeräte, that the counterclaim was inadmissible so far as it sought revocation of the United Kingdom part, while validity in that state would be examined inter partes if raised as a defence. On construction it refused to read the claim term 'circlip' as confined to DIN 471, holding that a European patent validated in many states does not limit itself to one German industrial standard that the non-German skilled person will often not know, and construed the term functionally by reference to the patent's own object of axial compactness; every prior-art securing element was a sleeve rather than a ring on that construction. Publication under Art. 80 UPCA was refused because UPC decisions are published on the Court's website in any event, and the penalty payment was fixed per infringing product by reference to its EUR 59 retail price.

Quelle und Fundstellen

Quelle: UPC Case File

Aktenzeichen: UPC_CFI_841/2025