2025-07-21 - Court of - Edwards Lifesciences v. Meril et al. - UPC_CFI_380/2023
- Aktenzeichen:
- UPC_CFI_380/2023
- Datum:
- Spruchkörper:
- Court of First Instance - Nordic Baltic Regional Division
- Art:
- Proceeding Decision
- Parteien:
- EDWARDS LIFESCIENCES CORPORATION v. MERIL LIFE SCIENCES PVT LIMITED, MERIL GMBH, SMIS INTERNATIONAL OÜ, SORMEDICA, UAB, INTERLUX, UAB, VAB-LOGISTIK, UAB
Kernaussage: The Nordic-Baltic Regional Division decided an infringement action together with counterclaims for revocation and conditional applications to amend, and dismissed a preliminary objection to its competence over a German subsidiary of the manufacturer.
2025-07-21 - Court of - Edwards Lifesciences
v.
Meril et al. - UPC_CFI_380/2023
notable
The Nordic-Baltic Regional Division decided an infringement action together with counterclaims for revocation and conditional applications to amend, and dismissed a preliminary objection to its competence over a German subsidiary of the manufacturer. It held EP 3 769 722 as granted invalid for added subject matter in independent claim 1 and in several dependent claims, and dependent claim 9 additionally insufficiently disclosed, while rejecting every inventive-step attack from two starting points. It refused to construct a new claim set under Art. 65(3) UPCA after the oral hearing to mirror the EPO Opposition Division's outcome, dealt with the auxiliary requests in the order the patentee had fixed before the hearing closed, and maintained the patent on the last request in that sequence. On that amended claim the accused catheter delivery system infringes literally, and the Court rejected a proportionality and public-health defence against the injunction because the defendants' argument concerned the valve prosthesis rather than the delivery device in suit and an alternative delivery device is available.
Nichtigkeitsgründe
Art. 138 EPCInventive Step
Patent survived (this ground)Art. 56 EPC · Art. 138(1)(a) EPC
“All fourteen attacks failed. Applying the problem-solution approach, the Court found the objective technical problem relative to Marchand and to Bowden is to provide an apparatus allowing an indication of the adjusted flex at the distal end in a reliable and safe fashion, and refused the defendants' problem formulation as hindsight-driven and as containing pointers to the solution [195]-[196], [264]. Neither starting point in combination with the common general knowledge, Hammersmark, Shturman, Lashinski, Phan, Levine or the CoreValve delivery system renders claim 1 obvious [248]-[249], [268].”
Added Matter
Patent invalid (this ground)Art. 123(2) EPC · Art. 138(1)(c) EPC
“The ground succeeded against the patent as granted. Feature 1.5.2 of claim 1 is wider than paragraph [031] of WO 359 because it does not require the externally threaded surface to be part of the rotatable member or its shaft [100]-[101]. Dependent claims 7, 9, 10 and 11 are intermediate generalisations of paragraphs [0169] and [0170] of WO 359, and claims 12 and 13 add matter by their back-references [138]-[161]. 'For these reasons (only) the patent as granted is invalid' [269]. The attacks on features 1.1, 1.3, 1.3.1 and 1.4 and on claims 2-6, 8 failed, and claim 1 of auxiliary request 1' cures the defect [278].”
Insufficiency of Disclosure
Partially invalid (this ground)Art. 83 EPC · Art. 138(1)(b) EPC
“The ground succeeded only against dependent claim 9 and claims 10-13 when dependent on it: the patent gives no guidance on an inner sleeve that both carries the slide nut and has an external thread mating with the flex indicating member, and the Court refused to read the reference to the 'inner sleeve (190)' as an obvious error [175]-[178]. Against claim 1 and the remaining dependent claims the attack failed, because the alleged omission of an essential feature is a clarity issue and the patent discloses one workable way to carry out the invention [166], [168]. Auxiliary request 1' is sufficiently disclosed [278].”
Clarity
Patent survived (this ground)Art. 84 EPC · derivative
“The Court twice refused to convert a clarity complaint into a revocation ground: the alleged omission of an essential feature from claim 1 'is a clarity issue' rather than insufficiency [166], and the clarity objection to auxiliary request 1' rested on a clerical confusion of 'flex indicating member' and 'flex activating member' in one of Edwards' pleadings and was 'clearly unsubstantiated' [278].”